Branding the Late Night President

What are we to make of our new President as he shuttles between Jay Leno and 60 Minutes ? Is there any such thing as too much exposure? Or is it that we are so accustomed to George II hiding out in his highly-fortified bunker that we consider it un-Presidential to joke with late night talk show hosts?

According to The Daily Beast’s Christopher Buckley in a piece entitled Bonfire of the Inanities,

Shows like Leno’s have been de rigueur venues for politicians for almost two decades now, so there is no point any longer in wringing one’s hands about that. I remember in the ’90s watching Vice President Al Gore go on the Letterman show with a top 10 list of why it’s fun to be vice president. Reason No. 1—drum roll, please—was: “Secret Service code name: Buttafuoco.” (I’ll let you Google Buttafuoco; it’s too depressing to explain.) I laughed at the time, but I remember thinking, “OK, but let’s not hear any more from you about ‘Respect for the office.’” Indeed, by the end of the Clinton administration, that phrase was pretty much dead on arrival.

But Obama’s appearance is the first time a sitting president has made the late-night show rounds. His comment about being a Special Olympian bowler was just one of those things, and he duly, and ritually, apologized. If any deeper good comes of the gaffe, it would be a cessation of such appearances. It seems as good a time as any to ask: Ought a sitting president be cozying up to late-night comedy show hosts?

I know, I know—I feel like a fusty old crank merely posing the question. (Maybe it’s this darned flu.) But it’s hardly as though the president of the United States lacks for venues, and such appearances have a way of trivializing any issue. Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson. Richard Nixon did, famously, go on Laugh In in 1968, but as a candidate; and to his credit, he rued the day and hated every second of it.

I, for one, am tired of reading about Michelle’s biceps. I am, however, all for a transparent presidency. Just not too transparent, OK? I still want to be awed by the office, by the supreme being-ness of it, which means that you can open the kimono just so far.

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