Reid delivers fireside podcast

WASHINGTON -- Seventy-five years ago Wednesday, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of 30 radio speeches that became known as his fireside chats.

In a reassuring voice, just a week after he was inaugurated, Roosevelt explained a banking crisis that had gripped the nation in those past few weeks and how he would lead a recovery in the midst of the Great Depression.

"Together we cannot fail," he said in closing.

On the anniversary, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada paid homage to Roosevelt in a thoroughly modern manner. He recorded not a radio message but a podcast, sitting in his office in front of a crackling fireplace, wearing a lapel microphone and speaking to a video camera.

Reid's three-minute message also was more partisan than the one delivered by his Democratic forebear, whose portrait hangs in Reid's office. The podcast was posted to the Senate Web site for Democrats and was planned to be made available through online services, his staff said.

Reid charged that President Bush and Republicans are slow to respond to problems with housing and energy including oil at more than $100 a barrel and gasoline prices predicted to reach $4 a gallon by summer.

"President Roosevelt addressed the country when it was in a tremendously difficult position," Reid said. "Banks had failed. The housing market was in real trouble. Today we have many of the same things wrong with us.

"We are just doing more of the same because the Republicans led by President Bush wanting to maintain the status quo," Reid said. "We are doing very little to stimulate the economy."

Congress passed legislation last month to provide tax rebate checks to most Americans, but Reid said Democrat efforts to do more for housing were filibustered by Republicans.

"So this country, we find ourselves in is a country just like when Franklin Roosevelt gave that chat 75 years ago," Reid said.

After listening to the podcast, Republicans said Reid is no Roosevelt.

"Franklin Roosevelt's optimistic outlook for America is a far cry from the partisan rhetoric coming from Harry Reid today," said Paul Lindsay, press secretary for the Republican National Committee.

"With many Nevadans faced with economic challenges, Reid's unproductive political performances serve as one more reason why voters are determined to replace him," Lindsay said.