President Obama’s Late-Night with Jimmy Kimmel and Why Politicians Need More Late-Night Appearances
None other than POTUS himself, Barack Obama, read "mean tweets" on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week.
According to a report by Ted Johnson of Variety, where it is very unlikely that a sitting president would appear on a late-night talk show, Obama is an exception, as the president did not just sit with the host and do a breezy interview, but also engaged in a comedy skit.
When Obama made his first appearance since taking office on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in 2009, pundits wondered whether it was too un-presidential. Those criticisms have abated. Now the question is what can draw attention and get people listening.
Presidential contenders have made a point of visiting late-night talk shows ever since candidate Bill Clinton went on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, playing the saxophone and helping boost his likability.
"It's become part of a political campaign, and you do violence to your own campaign if you don't try to take advantage of this opportunity," Robert Lichter, co-author of the book "Politics Is a Joke!," tells Variety's "PopPolitics" on SiriusXM. He is a professor at George Mason University and the director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Candidates actually first appeared on late-night talk shows as far back as the early 1960s, when candidate John F. Kennedy was a guest on Jack Paar's Tonight show. But it was not until the 1990s that Jay Leno and David Letterman began to book politicians, and Leno in particular sprinkled his monologues with political humor.
Lichter said politicians logged more than 100 appearances on late-night TV in the 2008 presidential cycle. That dropped in 2012, given that only Republicans had a contested primary. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, was reluctant to do late-night shows, but "he eventually came around to the realization that you just can't avoid these platforms anymore."