Kathryn Cramer Brownell discusses how Gerald Ford became president at a an unprecedented time of intensifying media scrutiny and growing public cynicism. To build back public trust in the presidency, he reluctantly turned to entertainment television, like the new late night show, Saturday Night Live. His embrace of humor ultimately elevated expectations for presidents to entertain audiences and inadvertently changed what it meant to be “presidential” in the United States.

Kathryn Cramer Brownell is professor of history and director of the Center for American Political History, Media, and Technology (CAPT) at Purdue University. She is author of Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life (UNC Press, 2014) and 24/7Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton University Press, 2023). She is currently an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and also serves as Senior Editor for the “Made By History” column at TIME Magazine.