Obama White House Veterans Gleefully Enter the Podcast World

May 18, 2023

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By Jonah Engel Bromwich

David Axelrod was having a candid conversation with an old colleague when, almost accidentally, the two made some news.

Mr. Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, was talking to Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general, on his podcast, "The Axe Files." He had asked Mr. Holder for his thoughts on Edward J. Snowden, the intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents about the National Security Agency in 2013.

"We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in," Mr. Holder said.

It was the first such public admission from the man who was the top law enforcement official in the United States when Mr. Snowden fled the country. The podcast comment was covered widely in the news media.

Mr. Holder's appearance on "The Axe Files" made him another member of a group that might informally be called the Obama-casters. Since the president made a much-noted appearance on the popular podcast "WTF With Marc Maron" in June 2015, three prominent former staffers have started their own shows, sometimes securing lengthy — and occasionally newsworthy — interviews with their administration peers.

Mr. Axelrod's podcast, produced by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN, started in September. In May, Mr. Obama's former speechwriter Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior White House adviser, started the weekly "Keepin’ It 1600."

Together, the two shows have hosted close to a dozen former and current members of Mr. Obama's administration, eliciting in-depth conversations with major figures including Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations; David Plouffe, who managed Mr. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign; and Ben Rhodes, a national security adviser.

While administration officials often embrace media roles after leaving the White House, podcast experts say there is something about the medium that makes particular sense for this administration.

"To a certain extent, they’re doing what all White Houses do. They find out what the hot medium of the time is and they exploit it," said Andy Bowers, the co-founder of Panoply, Slate's podcast network. "But I feel like podcasting is a medium that is perfectly in sync with the Obama White House and Obama himself."

Mr. Maron agreed, saying that podcasts help to promote intimate personal discussions, something President Obama embraced during their conversation.

"He's very human as presidents go, I think," Mr. Maron said.

Mr. Axelrod, who had not been much of a podcast listener, was taken with the format after hearing Mr. Obama on Mr. Maron's show.

"I thought it was one of the best conversations that I’d heard him have," Mr. Axelrod said. "It was revealing and interesting, and I thought ‘Boy, this would be fun.’ "

Mr. Axelrod's podcast typically consists of a single in-depth interview. He has welcomed reporters and several guests from across the aisle, including Mitt Romney, whom he helped to defeat in the 2012 presidential election. (The two joked about Donald J. Trump.)

Mr. Favreau and Mr. Pfeiffer's podcast is produced by The Ringer, the new website from the sports pundit Bill Simmons. It is faster paced and usually begins with the two hosts bantering about the week in politics — and these days, disparaging Mr. Trump's presidential campaign — before speaking with a guest. (Mr. Simmons hosted President Obama on his own show in 2012, the first time any sitting president had appeared on a podcast.)

Neither Mr. Axelrod nor Mr. Favreau sees it as part of their shows’ mission to scoop their more traditional media competitors, but in separate interviews, both men acknowledged that breaking news was desirable because it helped promote their podcasts. And each said that guests would be more likely to speak genuinely without resorting to talking points if they were not expecting an inquisition.

"A lot of the folks who are on with me, certainly the more prominent public officials, if you start asking the usual questions that they’re likely to get on TV, they start giving you the likely answers," Mr. Axelrod said. "And all of a sudden, it's not really a conversation anymore; it's more of a Kabuki dance."

"People are more likely to break news because you sit, and you’re comfortable and you’re having a conversation and you let your guard down a little bit more" on podcasts, Mr. Favreau said.

The Obama administration has been experimental in its communications strategy, often resorting to newer media outlets to spread the president's message. Mr. Obama seems to have taken a liking to comedians: A frequent guest on the late-night circuit during campaigns, he has also appeared on "Between Two Ferns," a satirical show hosted by the comedian Zach Galifianakis, and Jerry Seinfeld's web series "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee."

"The nature of communications in the modern era is that there is no bully pulpit anymore," Mr. Axelrod said of such appearances. "You have to reassemble it all the time from different pieces, and you have to be aware of new ways of communicating in order to keep ahead of the curve."

Administration officials have also been known to express irritation with more traditional media outlets, and Mr. Favreau said that the podcasts provide an antidote to the rushed discussion that is typical of cable news.

"Those of us who were in the Obama White House, that was always sort of our critique of the Washington political conversation: That it was surface level, and it was a way of relaying talking points and repeating conventional wisdom," he said.

Asked to elaborate on similarities between the character of the Obama administration and the podcasting world, Mr. Favreau emphasized that it was important in both to have "the time and space to have a more nuanced, subtle conversation."

"Everybody would say that's very Obama-like," Mr. Favreau said. "Because he can be professorial."

Follow Jonah Bromwich on Twitter @Jonesieman.

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