From Truman to Biden, presidential addresses have barely changed. It’s time to enliven them

On the evening of Sept. 1, 1950, President Truman gave a televised speech from the White House explaining recent developments in the Korean War.

On June 2, 2022, President Biden gave a primetime speech from the White House urging Congress to pass laws to reduce gun violence.

In the nearly three-quarters of a century between the two speeches, remarkably little has changed in the way presidents give White House addresses.

Of course, the images are now in color instead of black and white, and Teleprompters have replaced the sheets of paper Truman held in his hands. But the basic format has remained the same: the president sits at a desk or stands at a lectern with the U.S. and presidential flags behind him as he looks squarely at the camera and reads his speech without any adornment.

The look of presidential speeches has become predictable and, let’s face it, boring — no matter how important the content is. After doing things the same way for 14 administrations, it’s time to shake things up. If Biden and future presidents want to communicate their ideas to the public more effectively, they should take greater advantage of the technology that’s available to them.

Using a new approach could help revive public interest in presidential addresses, whose audiences have been declining for decades. When President Nixon gave primetime talks, more than half of U.S. households usually watched. By the time of Bill Clinton’s presidency, less than a third did, according to political scientists Samuel Kernell and Laurie L. Rice. Only 38.2 million Americans, less than one-eighth of the U.S. population, bothered to watch Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address.

A little presidential pizzazz could help recapture some of that audience. There is no good reason White House addresses can’t be enlivened using graphics, photos and videos, just like business presentations, college lectures and newscasts have been for years and as the House January 6 committee effectively did Thursday night.

As Biden discussed mass shootings in recent years, a map displaying their locations around the country could have appeared behind him. Or a chart illustrating the soaring number of gun deaths. Or a timeline showing the growing carnage once the assault weapons ban ended. Imagine the power of a short video or audio clip of parents describing their grief after Biden talked about the heartache caused by school shootings.

The same multimedia approach could be used for other topics such as the war in Ukraine, the fight against COVID-19 or administration efforts to fight inflation and improve the economy. The result would be more powerful presidential addresses that could better compete for the public’s attention against the multitude of cable television and streaming options now available.

As I describe in “Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis,” presidents who communicated successfully often took advantage of changing technology. Consider President Kennedy allowing his news conferences to be televised live for the first time or President Obama’s use of social media.

Perhaps no president took better advantage of improved technology than Franklin Roosevelt, who transformed presidential speeches by mastering the increasingly popular medium of radio. A week after his 1933 inauguration, he gave the first of his famous fireside chats to a nation suffering through the depths of the Depression. “My friends,” he began, “I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, and why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be.” 

With these words, Roosevelt reached 60 million people, half the U.S. population. For many of them, it was the first time they had ever heard a president’s voice. He sounded reassuring, like a kindly uncle giving advice. Afterward, the humorist Will Rogers said that Roosevelt had done such a good job of explaining the nation’s banking crisis that even the bankers understood it. 

Roosevelt’s fireside chats remained popular throughout his presidency. After U.S. forces lost a string of World War II battles in early 1942, Roosevelt asked Americans to have a world map in front of them during his next radio talk. He then calmly guided his listeners around the map, explaining the military challenges, detailing the advantages held by the United States and its allies and expressing confidence that they would eventually win.

Biden could do something similar the next time he speaks to the nation about the war in Ukraine or another foreign crisis. But he wouldn’t need to ask people to get out their own maps; he could show one on the screen behind him.  

To be sure, change can be risky, and using multimedia elements poorly would be embarrassing. They need to be expertly crafted by tech savvy aides and carefully rehearsed by the president so as not to sacrifice the seriousness of a presidential address. Holding up a National Weather Service map that has the path of a hurricane altered with a black marker to show it going where it didn’t actual go, as former President Trump once did, is not the right approach.

If done well, however, this new approach to White House addresses will improve presidential communications. And it can help Biden increase public support for new gun control laws and the rest of his policy agenda.  

Jon Marshall is an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School and the author of “Clash: Presidents and the Press in Times of Crisis” (Potomac Books, 2022).