In this classic style Paper Tiger production, Daniel Marcus draws parallels between how TV producers and Presidential campaign advisors use the same motifs and tactics to create a popular show. In this case the show is politics with the US President as the central organizing character in the nightly news. Through the image-based TV medium that does not appeal to the rational mind, a campaign can create a presidential image by touting abstract qualities.. But by using the techniques from the entertainment industry it is possible for producers to create presidential characters to which the audience can relate in a more direct way just as they do with sitcom and TV drama characters every night though the set in their living room. Marcus identifies the same plot and character qualities on the “Ronald Reagan Show” ,running for eight years at the time and quite popular, to the those already familiar to US audience of a sitcom dad with a little John Wayne thrown in for foreign policy. Often time the president is defined by his supporting cast- ie his cabinet, just as the Mary Tyler Moore character is defined in relation to others on the show. When critical issues such as the economy come into play a president will be more successful if he can be equated with a traditional authority character who inspires confidence just as characters in a familiarTV drama. Marcus is an Assistant Professor in the department of communication at Goucher College. As a member of the Paper Tiger Television collective, he edited ROAR! The Paper Tiger Television Guide to Media Activism (1991, Paper Tiger Television and the Wexner Center for the Arts) and wrote Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and the Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics (2004, Rutgers University Press). He has also published articles in the Historical Journal of Film, Television and Radio, Film and History, and The Television History Book (2003, British Film Institute). His video work has been shown at the American Film Institute National Video