What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House by Tevi Troy

Author:Tevi Troy [Troy, Tevi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History / United States / General
ISBN: 9781621570394
Amazon: B00APDG0VK
Barnesnoble: B00APDG0VK
Goodreads: 15824285
Publisher: Regnery History
Published: 2013-09-01T22:00:00+00:00

After getting past Ted Kennedy’s challenge in the primaries, Carter faced the consummate television pro in the general election: Ronald Reagan. Democrats liked to dismiss the former actor as an “amiable dunce,” but the “dunce” knew how to use television to communicate his idealistic message. The defining moment of the campaign was the lone televised debate. In his closing remarks, Reagan looked at the camera and asked the voters, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” He broke away in what had been a close race, and one week later he defeated Carter in a landslide.

Reagan probably watched more entertainment programming on television than any president since Eisenhower. In the early 1950s, when Reagan and Nancy were still dating, he often watched programs with her.128 As governor, Reagan would finish work at six, exercise, eat with Nancy, and watch television or read.129 He followed a similar routine in the White House as much as possible. In the absence of other social obligations, he would exercise, and even get into his pajamas and robe by six, as would Mrs. Reagan. He would then read or watch TV in their living room until ten-thirty or eleven o’clock, when they went to bed.130 They particularly liked Jeopardy! and Murder, She Wrote.131 Reagan’s fondness for Murder, She Wrote was so well-known that after the Iran-Contra affair, Johnny Carson even joked that Reagan had issued new instructions that “he must be awakened from his nap whenever there’s an arms deal. Before that, the only thing you could wake him for was nuclear war and ‘Murder, She Wrote.’”132

Reagan often found consolation in TV. In 1981, while the president recuperated from John Hinckley’s assassination attempt, Nancy went to England without him to attend the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana. Reagan never liked to be without Nancy, and he was disappointed to miss the wedding of the century. He did find some comfort on the tube, however, remaining at home watching reruns of The Waltons.133 Toward the end of his administration, the New York Times ran a story, citing unnamed aides, that Reagan was depressed in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair. “All he wanted to do was to watch movies and television at the residence,” the paper reported. The White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, dismissed the broader story but made no comments about Reagan’s TV habits.135

All of his preparation paid off. By the time he entered politics, Reagan was far more at ease with broadcast audiences than any of his rivals. In 1967, for example, he sparred with Robert F. Kennedy (and a panel of hostile international students) in a curiously forgotten debate on CBS. After Reagan easily bested him, a flummoxed Kennedy complained to his staff, “Who the f–got me into this?”134

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