Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” on the Mall Saturday has occasioned handwringing from some devoted fans who worry that he’s losing his outsider credibility, and celebration from some Democrats who hope to channel his energy to advance their electoral prospects. 
 
 But Stewart is an entertainer and, just as when Glenn Beck led a rally on the mall, this rally will be all about him and his Comedy Central partner Stephen Colbert. 
 
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 reset VIDEO: Obama on Stewart VIDEO: Stewart rally announced POLITICO 44 
 
 Their flirtation with political activism carries risks — just as some believe Oprah Winfrey did real damage to her image with a heartfelt endorsement of Barack Obama. But it also carries massive opportunities for Stewart, a man positioning himself as a cultural figure as central to his generation as Johnny Carson was to an earlier, less distracted one. 
 
 “It’s fantastic for the brand,” said MSNBC analyst Lawrence O’Donnell, marveling at Stewart’s ability to escape the TV section of the newspaper and generate what’s known as off-the-page publicity. “He’s a great comedian extending his work to another stage.” 
 
 “He knows what he does for a living,” O’Donnell said. “He will stand up there as a comedian and leave as a comedian.” 
 
 Stewart’s gambit had already proved itself out, perhaps, Wednesday night, when he scored an interview with the president of the United States, whose presence was enough to quiet grumbles from some on the left that an election-eve snark-fest made light of the real dangers of Republican control. 
 
 But if he's on trial for sycophancy, Stewart appeared set on proving his independence from Obama and the White House, choosing to advance the critique from the left that Obama — who appeared, at times, chastened — had been too cautious and moderate in advancing and selling his presidency. 
 
 “You ran on very high rhetoric, hope and change, and the Democrats this year seem to be running on, ‘Please baby, one more chance,’ ’’ Stewart quipped to Obama, chiding him for – if anything – a presidency too “timid” as Obama used the interview to plead with his supporters to vote. 
 
 Stewart repeatedly baited Obama with his own words and his 2008 campaign message. 
 
 It's " 'yes we can,' given certain conditions," Stewart said. 
 
 " 'Yes we can,' ’’ Obama replied almost resignedly, “but it's not going to happen overnight." 
 
 Stewart will navigate two sets of risks Saturday: He will, a handwringing legion of journalists and bloggers worry, cross the once-bright line from commentary to political participation, and find himself stranded, unable to return. 
 
 And he could — television industry analysts say — alienate portions of an audience for his show that isn’t as polarized as that of the real cable news shows, with viewers divided starkly left and right. 
 
 The first risk has been the subject of a great deal of prose, much of it in The Washington Post, as TBD.com’s Ryan Kearney catalogued Wednesday. Writers suggest either that Stewart is taking politics too seriously or that his supporters aren’t taking it seriously enough, and those fears are shared by some of Stewart’s most devoted aficionados. 
 
 “He’s moving to a very new position — and very much runs the risk of alienating some people who liked him because he didn’t seem to be positioning himself as in the mainstream of political life,” said Geoffrey Baym, who actually studies “The Daily Show” at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Stewart, he said, is transforming himself from an “outside figure” to a “mainstream political player. ||||| In search of the surest way to reach and encourage his core constituency during the midterm elections, President Obama visited "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" Wednesday night -- a show that prides itself on never taking anything seriously but still treated him with sympathetic awe. 
 
 That's how things are done now in the postmodern politiscape: Two men -- Jon Stewart and Barack Obama -- brimming with mutual regard, each of them funny in his own way, but managing to not be very funny together for the show's entire 22 minutes (plus a minute or two). Like any smart "Daily Show" guest, Obama knew the best bet was to play it straight. 
 
 "This is a nice set," Obama said, looking around at the garish marble columns and other federalesque touches on the set at the Shakespeare Theatre's Sidney Harman Hall, where the show has been taping all week as a way to hype "The Daily Show's" much-buzzed-about Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which is scheduled for Saturday afternoon on the Mall. "It reminds me of the [Democratic] convention." 
 
 "We actually bought it," Stewart said. "It was in a warehouse." 
 
 (MORE on 44: Watch the full Stewart-Obama interview) 
 
 The laughs belonged mainly to Stewart. Poking gently at the president, Stewart wondered what we all wonder: Can the economy truly recover? Has the White House capitulated to Wall Street and other powerful interests? "Are we the people we were waiting for, or does it turn out those people are still out there?" the ever-meta Stewart joked. 
 
 "I am feeling great about where the American people are, considering what we have gone through," the president answered, sticking to a list of accomplishments. When he said that Lawrence Summers, who stepped down last month as chair of the National Economic Council, has done a "heckuva" job, Stewart pounced on an obvious opportunity for comic relief. 
 
 "You don't want to use that phrase, dude," Stewart said. 
 
 Obama seemed resiliently cool as ever, ready-made for just about anything one can do on television, on any channel, including Stewart's fake news show. But that anything -- a surprise moment, or a difficult question, or a failed attempt at humor -- never quite arrived. 
 
 It's not much fun to write reviews of "The Daily Show." Woe unto him (and a special, dismissive woe unto old-fashioned critics and op-edders) who attempts to make too much or too little out of the cultural juggernaut it has become. 
 
 Nothing makes a person look more out of sync with the times than when he or she sits at a keyboard and tries, unwisely, to interpret the layers of irony, meta-irony and complicated satire that form the "The Daily Show's" basis and explain its impact and meaning. You might make a point, but you will be mocked. Serious thoughts about Saturday's gathering (which Stewart is co-hosting with his colleague Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report") only invite more quasi-intellectual disaster. 
 
 In simplest terms, the rally will be a publicity stunt meant to promote two TV shows while harnessing the voices of disenchanted and ultra-bright moderates out there. If I read it right (and that's a big "if") Stewart and company merely wish to lampoon the bitter political divides and noxious mediasphere gases that prevent America from . . . from doing better? ||||| WASHINGTON — If you are president of the United States and you take your campaign get-out-the-vote blitz to a fake news program, do you get tweaked, or do you get a pass? 
 
 You get tweaked, as President Obama discovered Wednesday, when he made his first appearance as president on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central. As the host, Jon Stewart, needled him, the president declared that he never promised transformational change overnight. 
 
 “You ran on very high rhetoric, hope and change, and the Democrats this year seem to be running on, ‘Please baby, one more chance,’ ” Mr. Stewart said at one point. At another, he wondered aloud whether Mr. Obama had traded the audacity of 2008 for pragmatism in 2010, offering a platform of “Yes we can, given certain conditions.” 
 
 Mr. Obama paused for a moment. “I think I would say, ‘Yes we can, but —— ” 
 
 Mr. Stewart, laughing, cut him off. The president pushed ahead, finishing his sentence: “But it’s not going to happen overnight.” 
 
 The gentle ribbing was perhaps a price the White House was willing to pay for the opportunity to reach Mr. Stewart’s valuable audience — young people who turned out in droves for the president, but who are deeply dissatisfied with him. Mr. Obama is spending the waning days of the election season trying to motivate that crowd to get to the polls, and he closed the interview by urging them to do just that, telling Mr. Stewart he wanted to make “a plug just to vote.” 
 
 Mr. Stewart, for his part, pressed the president with the standard liberal critique, accusing him of pursuing a legislative agenda that “felt timid at times” — a characterization Mr. Obama fiercely disputed. 
 
 The president wound up defending his health bill, members of Congress and even members of his administration. When Mr. Stewart asked why Mr. Obama, after promising to shake things up, had brought in old Democratic hands like Lawrence H. Summers, the Clinton Treasury secretary, Mr. Obama offered what, for Mr. Summers, was perhaps an unfortunate reply. 
 
 “In fairness,” he said, “Larry Summers did a heck of a job.” 
 
 Late-night television has come a long way since Bill Clinton, then a presidential candidate, played his saxophone for Arsenio Hall in 1992. The lines between entertainment and news are increasingly blurred — in part because Mr. Obama has been willing to take his presidential platform to settings his predecessors might have viewed as unconventional. 
 
 Mr. Obama has appeared as president on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and “Late Show with David Letterman”; over the summer, he dished with the doyennes of daytime television on ABC’s “The View.” (“I wanted to pick a show that Michelle actually watches,” he told them.) 
 
 “The Daily Show” interview was taped in the run-up to a rally Mr. Stewart and his fellow Comedy Central host, Stephen Colbert, are hosting Saturday on the National Mall. It went longer than anticipated — so long, in fact, that the show’s producers decided to cut the original introduction Mr. Stewart taped, which featured a riff of the host fiddling with a pen and tapping his fingers as he pretended to make the president wait in the wings, and his introduction of Mr. Obama as “White House chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee’s boss.” 
 
 In the interview, Mr. Obama conceded that he understands the feeling among his supporters that he has not fundamentally changed the way Washington does business. 
 
 “When we promised during the campaign ‘change you can believe in,’ it wasn’t ‘change you can believe in in 18 months,’ ” he said. “It was ‘change you can believe in — but we’re going to have to work for it.’ ”
– Critics are predictably split on President Obama's much-hyped Daily Show appearance last night, but no one seems to think he single-handedly saved—or doomed—Democrats: Though Jon Stewart and Obama are both funny in their own ways, they managed "to not be very funny together for the show's entire 22 minutes," writes Hank Stuever in the Washington Post. "Obama seemed resiliently cool as ever, ready-made for just about anything one can do on television ... But that anything—a surprise moment, or a difficult question, or a failed attempt at humor—never quite arrived." Also in the Post, Dana Milbank weighs in: "As in his MTV appearance a couple of weeks ago, Obama didn't try to connect with his youthful audience. He was serious and defensive," and even had "a Brownie moment" when he insisted that "Larry Summers did a heckuva job." But at least "Obama has been willing to bring his presidential platform to settings his predecessors might have regarded as unconventional, to say the least," writes Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the New York Times, noting that "the gentle ribbing was perhaps a price the White House was willing to pay for the opportunity to reach Mr. Stewart’s valuable audience." As far as Stewart is concerned, the president's "presence was enough to quiet grumbles from some on the left that an election-eve snark-fest [Saturday's Rally to Restore Sanity] made light of the real dangers of Republican control," write Ben Smith and Byron Tau on Politico. "Stewart played a comic, not a courtier, to Obama on his set, but he also let the president appear to be in on the joke." To watch the interview, click here.