Barack Obama will go down in history as a very popular and much loved President – especially with whoever follows him almost guaranteed to be awful – but will he be remembered for how good he was at memes?
Featured Image VIA
Apparently, Obama thinks he’s a bit of a dab hand at the internet, as revealed in a recent interview with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin:
I think part of the reason that I have been successful, though, despite maybe not always fitting my message into the pre-packaged formulas, is there is this whole other media ecology out there of the internet and Instagram and memes and talk shows and comedy, and I’m pretty good at that.
I [give] maybe the long-winded speeches that not everybody reads, but I can also do a slow jam on Jimmy Fallon better than most.
My humour paired with appearances on talks shows and comedy shows makes up for the fact that I’m not a sound-bite politician for the nightly news.
And as a consequence I think I’m able to reach a lot of folks, despite the fact that the conventional news media sometimes says, ‘You know, this speech is too long,’ or ‘It’s too complicated,’ or ‘He needs to have better sound bites,’ or what have you.
Because they’re not seeing me on ‘Between Two Ferns’ trying to sell the Affordable Care Act to young people, and the fact that we’re getting millions of hits on something that is not on conventional TV.
Image VIA
To be fair Obama is exactly right and his social media team is excellent at making him come across as a cool, funny dude that you would actually want to hang out with and have a conversation with. Maybe Hillary and Trump should take a leaf out of his book.
If you want to see Obama’s comedy in action, check him out in his legendary appearance in Between Two Ferns.
