Our Famous Presidents

Our Famous Presidents

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. “Republicans sneered at all of this, and many civically minded conservatives were sincere. But many more Republicans were envious. They wanted a Republican president who could avoid hard news interviews and press conferences and be praised for his media savvy. They wanted a Republican president who could lob tweets over the heads of the press. They wanted a Republican Obama—a president with universal cultural cachet. And they got it. There will be some Democrats who refuse to recognize how Trump is building on Obama’s expanded definition of what it means to be presidential because they like Obama’s tweets and celebrity friends and dislike Trump’s. Raw partisanship and motivated reasoning will get you far. But no one could honestly deny that Obama’s warm embrace of celebrity helped deliver us into a new era of political reality television. To quote the former president, one of our biggest collective challenges “is the degree to which we do not share a common baseline of facts.” At least, that’s what he said on David Letterman’s new show on Netflix.”