Obama appears on 'The View': A bit of TV history

The media president. Obama broke ground in 2009, the first sitting president to go on a late-night show, The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, one-liners at the ready ("I do think in Washington it's a little bit like American Idol, except everybody is Simon Cowell"). He also has been on Late Show With David Letterman, and repeatedly on 60 Minutes. Madonna writes, "Obama has had more public events - speeches, pressers, town halls, etc. - than any president in the first 19 months of a term in American history. He may have had more than any president during their full term."

Baltimore Sun writer David Zurawik quips on his website that "when the going gets tough, President Obama gets air time."

Unity and division. The subtext to many of the questions Thursday was, as Walters put it, the "beating" the White House has taken, and the fragmenting forces of media and politics. As Hasselbeck told Obama, "We are a very divided States of America."

Obama acknowledged the fragmentation. He glanced at the 24/7 news cycle, which, in the case of Sherrod, he said, had "generated a phony controversy." He acknowledged that racial tensions persisted but insisted that, generation by generation, they were moderating, and that "we're making great progress."

And he repeatedly declared his faith that "We share the same hopes, we share the same dreams, we share the same aspiration. . . . Everybody here is connected in some way. . . . I think most Americans feel that way."

In the face of the splintering power of politics-stoked media and media-driven politics, Obama had come to assert the image of a unified government and people.

Will it work? Madonna writes that stints on shows such as The View "are not likely to change the fundamentals of his situation. . . . I think the public just does not pay attention anymore - a classic case of overexposure going on here." Thompson worries that, as voters and politicians learn the skills of skepticism necessary in the information world vintage 2010, "skepticism grows so great that we cease to have common ground."

Common ground, the sense of anything shared, was really what was at stake yesterday on The View. The next three months will test which country emerges: Obama's United States or Hasselbeck's "divided states."

Contact staff writer John Timpane at 215-854-4406, jt@phillynews.com, or twitter.com/jtimpane.