
Barack Obama's appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno got huge ratings - one of the four biggest nights in the 15 years of Leno doing Tonight,
with numbers matching Leno's January 2005 Johnny Carson tribute.
And, given Obama's Special Olympics crack/gaffe/prelude to
a million apologies, these bonanza ratings are probably bad for Barack. Of course, the Barack Obama television express kept right on rolling with yesterday's 60 Minutes appearance, during which Steve Kroft noted Barack Obama's odd laughy/jokey demeanor, and asked if he was punch drunk.
If the Obama administration's goal was to get
millions of people to watch the President on television, well, then,
"Mission Accomplished." But should that be the goal? Or a more
specific, longer question: on a week of nonstop financial calamity and
turmoil, in which Obama became the first sitting President to guest on
a late-night talk show and gave an eight-minute ESPN interview on his NCAA Tournament bracket, was Barack Obama's use of television effective?
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