The Entertainer-in-Chief: How Popular Culture Has Remade the American Presidency with Kathryn Cramer Brownell
Gerald R. Ford became President at an unprecedented time of intensifying media scrutiny and growing public cynicism. To build back public trust in the presidency, he turned to popular culture tools, ultimately elevating expectations for presidents to entertain audiences and inadvertently changing what it meant to be “presidential” in the United States.
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation welcomed Kathryn Cramer Brownell to discuss her book Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life and how Hollywood connections can be an asset in the political world.
Kathryn Cramer Brownell is associate professor of history at Purdue University and author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News and Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life.
