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On April 17, 1976, President Gerald Ford and his press secretary Ron Nessen appeared on the late-night television show Saturday Night Live (SNL) after much deliberation. Though reluctant to assume the position as entertainer in chief, Ford's appearance on SNL marked a distinctive shift in his communication strategy, as his campaign team attempted to restore the power of the Oval Office through performative politics. Though narratives of the development of the entertainer in chief have focused overwhelmingly on the celebrity presidency of John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, this article excavates the place of Richard Nixon and especially Gerald Ford in navigating a shifting media landscape with the tools of entertainment and transforming public perceptions of the presidency in the process.
Keywords: media, television, entertainment, campaigns, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ron Nessen
On December 8, 2014, President Barack Obama appeared as a guest on one of the final episodes of the Colbert Report (Mercia 2014). In a seemingly surprise move, the president interrupted the host Stephen Colbert's political satire segment, "The Word." "Well, Stephen," Obama said amidst cheers from the audience, "you have been taking a lot of shots at my job, so I've decided to take a shot at yours." As the commander in chief then literally replaced Colbert as the star of the show, he asked, "How hard can this be?" The subsequent segment, which Obama renamed "The Decree" to make it more "presidential," had television and Internet audiences laughing along with the country's entertainer in chief. Obama then used the comedy show to promote a range of administration policies, including immigration, health care, and the Keystone pipeline.
The Colbert Report performance was part of Obama's strategy of using entertainment- late-night comedy sketches, Internet platforms like Buzzfeed, and even reality television shows like Bear Grylls's-not only to win elections, but also to govern. According to Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's senior adviser, appearances that blend jokes with policy promotion, like when the president appeared with Zack Galifianakis on the Internet comedy show Between Two Ferns, constitute an "extension of the code we have been trying to crack for seven years now," namely how to communicate more effectively with younger Americans (Alma 2014). On the campaign trail, and in office, Obama has appealed to...