The line-up for Jay Leno last night included Garth Brooks and... the President of the United States Barack Obama. President Obama made history by being the first sitting U.S. president to appear on late night network television. His appearance highlights the importance of public diplomacy as a necessary exercise in policy-making.
The coverage of Obama's visit to California truly demonstrated how much the world has changed. If Obama ever blurred the lines between president and celebrity, no previous example could quite match his most recent escapade to the land of the Governator.
While his appearance on the Tonight Show was no surprise, watching comedian Jay Leno compare the president's security entourage with Mariah Carey's, and then actually seeing Obama sit in the same chair reserved for popular culture stars promoting their latest projects, seemed peculiar, at the very least.
Kevin Eubanks, Leno's sidekick and band leader, might've conveyed it best by shocking the host with his attire. "I've never seen you in a suit," Leno exclaimed, while hardly containing his laughter. In many ways, Eubanks' attempt to dress up for the President reflected the stretching of boundaries that Obama's visit caused.
Unfortunately, the media coverage of Obama's interview with Leno has been dominated by a critique of the President's regrettable gaffe in which he described his unsatisfactory bowling skills as being "like the Special Olympics or something." His slip of the tongue exemplified one of the main challenges of communicating to publics (or, in the case of the President, constituents), through a medium like the one he chose.
Nonetheless, even beyond the short-term controversy caused by his gaffe, Obama's appearance on Leno serves as definitive proof that, in the 21st century, the President cannot only be Commander-in-Chief, but rather must also be Communicator-in-Chief.
Obama is well aware that his ability to conduct policy-making is inherently connected with his personal political capital. Not unlike a movie star whose popular public persona serves to catapult a film to the top of the box office, Obama seems keenly aware that the success of his administration's policies is highly reliant on his own public persona and his ability to communicate effectively with publics.
Obama's willingness to appear on Jay Leno, or to create an NCAA bracket with ESPN, are not, as naive observers may claim, signs that the President is wasting his time, but instead, they serve as prime examples that in today's world policy-making is as much about making policies as it is about effectively using public diplomacy to assure the policies' approval and potential success.
Critics will undoubtedly criticize Obama for avoiding the "true" responsibilities of his office. Those who do so, fail to realize that, unlike his predecessor, Obama understands that in order to fulfill the responsibilities with which he has been charged, he must adapt to fit current patterns of media consumption, thus heightening his chances to shape and influence debate in the public sphere.
Others will accuse the president of making his administration more about him than about the office he holds. Then again, those critics will have failed to acknowledge that Obama could've not been elected if it weren't for an effective construction and communication of a popular public persona, and that, as a public figure, he is not unlike any other public figure, competing for the attention of audiences. In the age of a crowded marketplace of ideas, the presidency is as much, or more, about Obama's persona as anything else.
Lastly, other critics may accuse Obama of delegitimizing and demystifying the highest office in the United States. They may claim that by joking with Jay Leno about "life in the bubble", or by comparing Washington to an American Idol full of Simon Cowells, Obama is weakening the perception of a role that has been historically understood to be grand and extraordinary. These critics miss the value of conveying transparency, accessibility and humanity, particularly when the person doing so serves as a role model and a leader.
Yet, most importantly, all of those critics fail to see that after Barack Obama, every president will necessarily have to be Public Diplomat-in-Chief.
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