November 8, 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Chevy Chase’s portrayal of American President Gerald Ford as a bumbling klutz on ‘Saturday Night Live’.
These days we expect “SNL” to mock the president. (There is even speculation in every administration about who will play president.)
But when Chase did it the first time, it was groundbreaking. In the years before “SNL,” mocking the president on what was still the relatively new mass medium of television often had to overcome the resistance of network censorship and presidential pressure.
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James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump during Trump’s train visit on February 25, 2023. (Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images)
In the early 1960s, NBC executives would not allow a comedy sketch about President John F. Kennedy to appear on the “Art Carney Show.” As a network spokesperson explained, “We felt it would have been inappropriate for artists to actually portray the president and his wife,” adding that the “decision was based on a matter of good taste.”
The networks were also reluctant to mock Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson. In 1964, NBC imported the British parody show “That Was the Week That Was”, which was developed specifically in England to “tick at the pomposity of public figures”.
Although the show occasionally took a jab at Johnson, NBC censors continually fought with the show’s producers over LBJ jokes. NBC also took the step of suspending all political humor on the show around the 1964 presidential election.
Another show that attempted to make fun of the president was “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” The show, which premiered on CBS in 1967, even drew resistance from Johnson himself. A skit mocking Johnson prompted Johnson to tell CBS chairman William Paley late that night, “Get that shit off my back.” Paley asked the show to make things easier for the president.
Aidy Bryant as Senator Joe Manchin, Cecily Strong as Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Pete Davidson as Andrew Cuomo, James Austin Johnson as President Joe Biden, Ego Nwodim as Representative Ilhan Omar, and Melissa Villaseñor as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during the ‘Biden Unites Democrats’ cold opening on October 2, 2021 (Will Heath/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
When Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, the brothers promised to lay off the jokes about the incoming president for a while. But that promise didn’t stop them from having comedian David Frye impersonate Nixon on the show.
Still, the show was canceled in April 1969 due to a host of controversies, including jokes about sex and religion, as well as political jokes.
In the series finale, the brothers read a letter from former President Johnson, in which he claimed he was okay with being mocked.
“It’s part of the price of leadership to be the target of clever satirists. You have given us the gift of laughter. May we never become so gloomy or self-righteous that we cannot appreciate humor.”
While the words were admirable, it was a bit difficult to take Johnson seriously given his previous intervention with Paley.
Jay Pharoah as President Barack Obama and Bobby Moynihan as Kim Jong-un during the ‘Obama Mandela’ cold open (Dana Edelson/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
As for Frye, when the show was canceled he continued to impersonate Nixon on comedy albums. But even here the networks continued to hinder. In 1973, the three major networks in New York refused to accept advertisements for Frye’s Watergate-related album. According to a spokesperson for WABC-TV, “It is such a serious matter that we have decided not to accept advertising for comedy material related to Watergate.”
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With this background in mind, “SNL” must have known it was taking a risk when it had Chase dispatch the president on live television. Chase’s portrayal went beyond light jokes at the president’s expense. Chase wandered around the Oval Office, holding a glass instead of a phone to his ear and pouring water from a pitcher onto the papers on his desk. Yet the show not only survived, it thrived.
That first “SNL” presidential skit was a turning point that fundamentally changed the relationship between the American people and the president. The 1960s and 1970s had undermined the American presidency in the eyes of the American people. Kennedy’s assassination shocked Americans who did not realize the president was so vulnerable.
The Johnson years burst the bubble of presidential honesty on foreign affairs. Nixon’s Watergate scandal burst a similar domestic affairs bubble. And then the unelected Ford came to power and almost immediately pardoned Nixon for Watergate. The decision is praised in retrospect, but was controversial at the time.
Dana Carvey as George Bush on ‘Saturday Night Live’. (Alan Singer/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
Chase’s opening of the show as Ford on that day in 1975 brought mocking presidents from the narrowcast world of the comedy routines of Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl and more regularly into the mass media. That first “SNL” sketch ushered in a period in which presidents became both closer and further from the American people.
Ridicule can ensure that politicians who are physically distant become less distant from ordinary citizens. As a result, presidents are now almost ubiquitous in a world of TV and social media, with constant ridicule putting them on the back burner – if not more so. In this world, even a brief presidential disappearance of a day or two can lead to unfounded rumors of a presidential demise.
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At the same time, presidents are further removed from the American people because the security bubble around them is so much tighter. The White House resembles an armed camp. Presidential motorcades are unapproachable, and presidents have a hard time maintaining regular communication with friends. George W. Bush gave up email. Obama resisted pressure to give up his BlackBerry.
In our current Chevy Chase-supported world, presidential mockery is a constant. While Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel learned that presidents and network affairs can still focus on an individual comic or show, those are unfortunate exceptions rather than the rule, and even Kimmel’s exile lasted barely a week.
The president’s continued mockery on Kimmel, as well as South Park, Jon Stewart, social media and a host of other places, shows that the genie of the mass-market, largely uncensored, presidential mockery that Chevy Chase unleashed on “SNL” a half-century ago is not going back in the bottle, and for that we should be grateful.
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