ABSTRACT
On September 9, 2009, over 32 million Americans watched President Barack Obama deliver a prime time television address on healthcare reform to a joint session of Congress.1 Twelve days later, Obama appeared on the Late Show With David Letterman. For Obama, the first sitting U.S. president to appear on a latenight entertainment-oriented talk show, this was the second such appearance. It capped an intensive personal media push by the president to promote healthcare reform, including interviews on five Sunday news shows the previous day (on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Univision). That same month, Obama’s Internet team sent weekly-and sometimes twice-weekly-emails on healthcare to the roughly 13 million individuals in its famed email database.
