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Obama pulls up a chair
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September 28, 2009
By Lara de Matos
His turn on The Tonight Show (when Jay Leno was still at the helm) afforded that programme its highest ratings in four years, while his time on 60 Minutes provided equally impressive results, yielding the documentary's top viewership score in almost a decade.
And on Monday evening, local audiences will be able to watch the world's most powerful political figure in action on The Late Show With David Letterman, making US President Barack Obama the first ruling president to "pull up a chair" on the Letterman set.
All of which isn't to say it's his first appearance on the series, given that he had previously popped into the studio five times while campaigning for the US government's top spot.
The episode in question drew large media attention when it was broadcast in the US last week, not least because of Obama's tongue-in-cheek comment, "I think it's important to realise that I was actually black before the election", when asked whether he believed some of the acerbic reaction to his proposed policy changes were racially driven.
After only seven months in office, Obama has already notched up a whopping 114 interviews, compared to that of his predecessors, George Bush and Bill Clinton, who had only managed a comparatively measly 37 and 41 "interrogation sessions" respectively by the same stage of their tenure.
But while some salute Obama's innovative use of pop culture communication channels (including Twitter, through which he and his family members - or their PR minions at any rate - keep the American people informed of their goings-on) as ingenious, others are beginning to question whether the president's prolific public appearances could lead to Obama fatigue.
"If you dilute it to the point where people are like, 'Oh, yeah, he's on the TV again', they're going to start changing the channel," said Dana Perino, White House press secretary under Bush, during an interview with the Fox Business network.
However, her successor, Robert Gibbs, begs to differ. "People want to hear from the president about the choices we have," he said. "I think it's important the president continues to speak to a host of different audiences... about the benefits of healthcare."
This was concerning Obama's controversial "sales pitch" for a radical overhaul of the US healthcare system as the main motivation for his media blitz.
But as one American political commentator put it: "We do know messages wear out over time and they begin to lose their impact... the hard part is that it's difficult to determine at what point you've worn out the message."
As to whether Obama's publicity efforts will draw more supporters, or simply see people grow tired of him and begin to point fingers in his direction for perceived administration failures, remains to be seen.
Should the latter prove true, he could always take a page out of former president Ronald Reagan's book: when things began to get a little heated in the political kitchen, Reagan's strategy was to simply "disappear for four or five weeks until things simmered down somewhat".
Catch Obama on The Late Show with David Letterman tonight on SET (DStv channel 113) at 10pm.
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