The chattering classes have been asking themselves whether or not President Obama is overexposed for months now. Can a president actually ever be "overexposed"? In a democracy, isn't seeing and hearing from the president supposed to be the nature of the political animal? We are all for transparency and sunshine in government. Obama's predecessor, Bush 43, by contrast, seemed to prefer clearing brush on the ranch to holding press conferences. And when President Bush did hold actual press conferences, they were more acts of improvisational comedy than an informative discussion on policy.

President Obama can only be properly construed as media ubiquitous. But does that much face-time in American homes, through the television and computer screen, diminish the presidents ability to dazzle and move the populace towards his end-goals? Last week, for example, the president gave a speech on culture and choice at Notre Dame. The speech was televised by almost all of the cable news channels. The run-up to the big speech was a week in the making. On Thursday, the president went up against former vice president Dick Cheney in a back-to-back "face off" on the subject of military interrogations. On Friday, CNN and MSNBC covered the president's commencement speech at the Naval Academy. Does the young president have the stamina to fight so many policy battles in the public arena? Donnie Deutsch, who knows something about brands and CEOs, makes the argument on MSNBC (via theRoot):

"This is a president that, part of his brand is being out there...he is a telegenic, media-centric president--and he's a brave president...this guy's going on, taking questions prime time. Can you imagine our last president doing that? ...And by the way, him being on Leno shows he's in charge. I was a CEO, I ran a multi-billion dollar company. When we were in trouble, the worst thing I could do was hide in my office vs. walking around, cracking jokes--because that let my employees know, 'You know what?--he knows everything's OK, it's gonna be OK.' And that's his job -- he's gotta be daddy to everybody."

Obama has big, big fights coming up on health care, the future of the automotive industry, the financial sector and a Supreme Court nomination battle scheduled for the summer. Does the president risk media overexposure? If so, how will that hurt his administration's agenda?

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