What did these changes in the media landscape mean for American politics? Kaempffert anticipated the ramifications of radio turning the whole continent “into a huge auditorium.” He envisioned how the President of the United States would become a “real personality—something more than a political abstraction bearing a familiar name and harboring an official mansion popularly called the ‘White House.’” Entering American homes would do more than create an intimacy with citizens. It also would demand that candidates develop “screen personalities" and “voice personalities” similar to those on radio and in films.
The 1924 Presidential race highlighted those changes. Deliberately distancing himself from his scandal-tainted Republican Party, incumbent President Calvin Coolidge stressed his individual accomplishments and character. To do so, the Coolidge campaign constructed a modern Presidential media operation that drew on the skills of experts in public relations, advertising, and entertainment. Coolidge used film as well as the new medium of radio to communicate directly to voters. His team also carefully placed magazine stories (including features about First Lady Grace Coolidge in women’s magazines).
And, in what would become a staple of later Presidential politics, the President surrounded himself with popular entertainers. At one event, the president and first lady welcomed 30 prominent entertainers to a breakfast of sausages and hotcakes. Headlining the performance, the singer and movie star Al Jolson endorsed the president and performed an original song, “Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge.” The result? Coolidge cast himself, like the nation’s most revered performers, as a celebrity.
Such political innovations reflected a growing relationship between the mass media and major players in the political sphere that also defined the terms of their cooperation and operation. The peculiar combination of commercial entertainment, industrial consolidation, and government regulation reflected the agenda of key actors in business and government. In particular, it relied on an alliance among large corporations like RCA and MGM Studios that sought to standardize and consolidate their industries and shield them from censorship, labor unrest, and public supervision; and Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1929 (and President thereafter) who pursued a broader strategy of business-government association that empowered networks of professional experts (like radio engineers), frequently bringing them into many government positions.