DAVID CARR ESSAY


When Barack Obama became president, he promised a “new era of openness.” After almost a year of media coverage that seemed to be all-Obama, all-the-time that concluded in a reality-program couple crashing a state dinner at the White House, I’d be O.K. with a little less exposure.

When Michaele and Tareq Salahi waltzed uninvited into the White House for a state dinner last month, their camera crew from Bravo’s forthcoming reality show “The Real Housewives of D.C.” was left waiting outside, but it’s not as if their presence would have been much of a breach of current protocol.

After all, like much of daily life there, their visit was recorded and uploaded on the White House Flickr feed, the always-on streaming window into “the people’s house,” a nickname that has never been more apt than under the current residents.

Considering the White House’s hulking, media-rich Web site, its Facebook page, photo galleries and podcasts on iTunes, the presidency seems less threatened by the incursion of a reality show than running an administration that is in danger of becoming one.

In an effort to remain connected to the social media world that was so much a part of his electoral victory, the Obama administration may be guilty of a very contemporary common offense: Oversharing.

“In the context of a president that you see all the time and hear from all the time, how important does the speech at West Point, the most important speech of his presidency, become?” asks Lawrence O’Donnell, a producer and writer on the television show “The West Wing,” a political drama, and an analyst on MSNBC. “It becomes like weather reports, just another of many messages from the president.”

The president can’t be blamed for a few idiots trying to game their way into his presence, but his shared love of the camera leaves him vulnerable to suggestions that he is too busy appearing as the president and not busy enough being one. The White House, something of an imperial palace under President Bush, has become the most camerainfested place since “Big Brother.” Oprah Winfrey was there recently with a camera crew in tow, chatting with the first couple and taking in the Christmas decorations.

She and the first lady shared the cover of her magazine back in April, not to be confused with the Vogue cover Michelle Obama did back in March. Mrs. Obama will also be starring in an episode of the cooking show “Iron Chef” this January and has already done a live shot for Jay Leno, a talk show host, from the White House.

The gate-crashers weren’t so much invading the Obamas’ privacy as trying to grab some of the abundant media limelight already there. It’s not as if they were the only media-connected people in attendance: Brian Williams, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” and Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric, which just announced it was selling majority ownership of NBC Universal, were at the same state dinner.

They are more or less related by affiliation with the crashers, because Bravo, the ring leader of the camera crew, is a division of NBC Universal.

Mr. Williams and the president are already burger-and-fries buddies, having gone out for fast food last spring with a camera crew. President Reagan was the first sitting president to dine as a customer at a public restaurant, but the restaurant was the exclusive Le Cirque; no cameras allowed. And when Andy Warhol documented the event, it was in his diary, not on a Facebook page.

“When he ran, the Obamas were pitched as kind of a reality show to the public. We’d hear about his dinners with Michelle and we felt like we knew them,” said Michael Hirschorn, a former executive at VH1 who runs Ish Entertainment, which produces reality programming. “But now that he is in office, there is a danger of the mystique going away. The problem with social media and constant video is that it flows like water and reduces everything to the same level. Not much of it is special, and it all becomes content, even if it’s the president.”

The clamor, media and otherwise, that the Obamas have created in Washington of course brings to mind another handsome young couple with beautiful children who riveted the nation . It was, after all, Jacqueline Kennedy who first introduced the televised version of the White House to citizens, giving CBS News a tour.

But the peek was carefully scripted, following her maxim of “minimum information given with maximum politeness.” To watch the tour more than four decades later on YouTube, it looks less like the dawning of a new media age than a quaint reminder of a bygone era when distance between the press and the presidency was vast.

Mrs. Kennedy may have been glamorous and done her share of image management, but she had a chaste relationship with the camera and the public. “I want to live my life, not record it,” she said.

JUSTIN LUBIN

Michelle Obama recently appeared on Jay Leno’s comedy show. Jacqueline Kennedy gave minimum information with maximum politeness. / CBS PHOTO ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES