With the open enrolment deadline for healthcare.gov just two weeks away, President Obama has been busy trying to convince young people who don’t follow politics or the news to sign up for health insurance. Earlier in the week, he appeared on Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis–a show which few would confuse with Charlie Rose– and today he appeared on On Air With Ryan Seacrest, a show which tends to be equally devoid of political content.
During his conversation with the president, Seacrest brought up the Between Two Ferns appearance, which has already received 15 million hits and has directed significant traffic to the healthcare.gov website.
“Zach actually was pretty nervous,” Obama said. “It was funny to watch because this whole Between Two Ferns schtick–which I wasn’t familiar with before my staff told me that we had been pitched to do this–his whole character is to go after the guest and I think he was looking around and seeing all these Secret Service guys with guns and thinking, ‘I wonder what happens here if I cross the line?’ But we had a great time.”
That Obama had hit his intended demographic became apparent when he discussed the shoot later in the day with his daughters.
“And as I said, I wasn’t familiar with this thing, but when I was at the dinner table with the girls and I said, ‘Well today I did something with Zach, it’s called Two Ferns I think?’ Malia was so excited! She had seen all the previous episodes, so I figured it was going to reach our target audience, which is a lot of young people and it turns out we’ve had close to 15 million hits. And the amazing thing is afterwards people actually did link to healthcare.gov and people actually signed up for health insurance, so it ended up working, but I think I have to keep my day job.”
Seacrest also brought up Obama’s recent trip to the Gap, which prompted the president to defend his taste in pants. “I’ve been unfairly maligned about my jeans,” Obama said. “The truth is, generally I look very sharp in jeans. There was one episode like four years ago in which I was wearing some loose jeans mainly because I was out on the pitcher’s mound and I didn’t want to feel confined while I was pitching and I think I’ve paid my penance for that. I got whacked pretty good. Since that time, my jeans fit very well.”
Obama ended up buying $44 cardigans for his girls, who were both pleased by the purchase. “They thought for a dad, I displayed reasonably good taste. The bar is fairly low. But I didn’t get too adventurous. It was your basic sweaters and solid colors, [I] didn’t get too wild.”
