From FDR to Obama: Entertainers in chief

Barack Obama may be America's first “entertainer in chief,’’ but he’s not the first president to recognize the political value of entertainment.

“Obama’s following in the footsteps of presidents like Kennedy and Reagan,’’ says Jon Macks, a former Tonight Show with Jay Leno writer and author of Monologue: What Makes America Laugh before Bed.

“All the good ones had a little show business in them,’’ he says, “and most of the ones who weren’t good didn’t.’’

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Some milestones in political entertainment:

1933: Franklin Roosevelt delivers the first of his national radio “fireside chats.’’ Neither entertaining nor particularly chatty to the ear today, they nevertheless helped FDR circumvent Republican-controlled newspapers to connect directly with Americans worried about a banking crisis.

1945: Vice President Harry Truman, with actress Lauren Bacall sitting atop his piano, plays for servicemen at the National Press Club.

1953: President-elect Dwight Eisenhower appears on film on a Colgate Comedy Hour episode about his upcoming inauguration, featuring the comedy team of Abbott and Costello. They try to kick a live (Democratic) donkey off stage.

1959: Sen. John F. Kennedy, candidate for president in 1960, appears on The Jack Paar Show (NBC’s Tonight). He’s the first such hopeful to come on a late-night talk show.

1968: GOP nominee Richard Nixon records a clip for Rowan & Martin’sLaugh-in, reciting the NBC series’ signature line — “Sock it to me!’’ — as a question: “Sock it to me?’’ Producer George Schlatter will later claim that Nixon, famously stiff, said the spot got him elected.

1969: President Nixon plays Happy Birthday on the piano at a White House ceremony to award the Medal of Freedom to Duke Ellington, 70. Nixon gets a laugh when he says he’ll play in the key of G, “the only one I know.”

1976: President Gerald Ford, butt of many sketches on Saturday Night Live with Chevy Chase as a bumbling Ford, pre-records the show’s signature intro, “Live, from New York, It’s Saturday Night!’’ His press secretary, Ron Nessen, is guest host.

1992: Presidential candidate Bill Clinton, in shades, blows his saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. (Clinton first played the sax on TV four years earlier on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, an appearance designed to remedy damage done by his poor Democratic National Convention speech.)

2007: John McCain announces intention to seek presidency on The Late Show with David Letterman.

2008: Joking that “the road to the White House runs through me,’’ Letterman lambasts McCain for several nights after the GOP nominee — having “suspended’’ his campaign amidst the financial crisis — cancels an appearance. McCain subsequently comes on the show to apologize.

2009: Obama becomes first sitting president to appear on a late night talk show (Leno’s Tonight).