Ron Nessen Was the Weirdest ‘SNL’ Host to Help Tank A Presidency
The White House was terrified of Chevy Chase.
Gerald Ford had just walked an unlikely path to the presidency, first taking over for the disgraced Spiro Agnew and then for Richard “You can’t fire me, I quit!” Nixon. The new leader of the free world had the advantage of simply not being Nixon, but that didn’t last long, thanks to a new comedy show called Saturday Night (so new that it wasn't yet Saturday Night Live).
One of the surprise hit’s first recurring characters was Chase’s unkind imitation of Ford. Though Ford was a real-life college athlete, this cartoon version was a clumsy oaf, falling off ladders and tumbling down stairs. The caricature stuck to Ford like tar, and his team believed the best way to fight back was to prove that they were in on the joke.
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Ron Nessen, who passed away this week at age 90, was Ford’s press secretary. He made nice with writer Al Franken at the 1976 White House Correspondents’ Dinner and said he was a fan — which was somewhat true. But Nessen really was trying to do damage control, according to Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live. When Franken told Lorne Michaels about Nessen, an invitation to host soon followed.
It was an out-of-the-box move for Saturday Night, inviting a political wonk with no comedy background to host an edgy late-night comedy show. It would get a lot of publicity, but Michaels knew they had to keep the jokes coming hard so that viewers wouldn’t think the show was pandering. Nessen swore he was fine with that. He even persuaded his boss to pre-tape a bit in which he woodenly proclaimed, “I’m Gerald Ford… and you’re not.”
But any hopes that Nessen might have had about using the show to boost Ford’s image were misguided. The show’s writers sharpened their knives for Nessen’s arrival. According to Rosie Shuster in Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, the attitude that week was: “The President’s watching. Let’s make him cringe and squirm.”
That week’s jokes weren’t all at Ford’s expense, but Nessen presided over what was Saturday Night’s raunchiest episode to date, with fake ads for feminine hygiene products, a jelly-naming sketch with ideas like Painful Rectal Itch and Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella talking about the upcoming “presidential erection.”
Nessen thought the show went great, partially because his sketches weren’t as crass and got big laughs. According to the Lorne biography, Nessen even got high with Paul Simon and the cast after the show.
The good feelings didn’t last long, however. By Monday, Ford’s former press secretary had written an op-ed calling Nessen’s stab at comedy “a gross error in judgment.” Betty Ford worried that her husband’s pre-taped bit made it seem like he endorsed all the dirty stuff. Nessen got a note from the president’s son Jack, which read: “If you get a min., I’d be happy to explain to you that your job is to further the Pres. interests, not yours or your family’s.”
Nessen’s appearance was a disaster for the Presidency but a big success for Saturday Night. It brought new viewers to the first-year show, and people were impressed that it had the nerve to figuratively extend a middle finger to the White House.
As for Ford’s reelection bid against upstart Jimmy Carter? Maybe the most damning comment came from a voter who spoke to Washington Post columnist Bill Gould. If Ford agreed to let Nessen host Saturday Night, the reader said, “I don’t see how I can vote for a man who could be so dumb.”
