President Obama’s goals during his appearance on the The View this afternoon the first time a sitting president has been on a daytime talk show were obvious: show confidence and pride in persevering Americans, as when he proclaimed, “Don’t bet against American workers, don’t bet against American ingenuity.” Remind everyone how charming and likable you are by cracking jokes every few minutes (His daughters are at the age where they’re “not quite teenagers yet so they still like you”). Try to sooth the pervading climate of racial divisiveness, as when he explained to Barbara Walters why he doesn’t care about whether he’s labeled as black or biracial.
And also, don’t spoil all of it by demonstrating to the American people that, in addition to taking vacations and golfing seemingly every weekend, you also have time to keep up on the latest superficial developments in pop culture. Not a problem!
No idea who Snooki is (even after making a joke involving her at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a few months ago)? No awareness at all of the Mel Gibson tapes? No time to tweet? These are generally positive attributes for a man with a lot of more important things to focus on. He does admit to knowing that Lindsay Lohan is in jail, but when asked how he knows, he simply says, “I don’t know.” Acceptable answers would have been TV, the Internet, radio, magazines, newspapers, heard someone talking about it, etc., but okay. Don’t want to seem too interested.
