Meet the Prez

Impersonations back then weren't strictly gags, however. In 1931, Time magazine's radio program, "The March of Time," dramatized the week's news events using actors imitating the voices of world leaders, including FDR and Adolph Hitler.

"There was a big clampdown," says Nicholas Cull, an American studies professor at the University of Leicester, on leave at the University of Southern California.

Kennedy special assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was listening to his car radio while driving to the White House one morning in late 1962, and heard what seemed to be a presidential news conference. A distinctly Kennedy voice answered a question about the chances of a Jewish president being elected: "Now, let me say, I don't see why a person of the Jewish faith can't be president of the United States. I know as a Catholic I could never vote for him, but other than that . . . "

The startled Schlesinger was relieved when the station identified the excerpt from Meader's album "The First Family." But he wasn't amused, says Cull. He dashed off a memo asking "what in hell a president of the United States ought to do about mimicry."

A serious debate ensued. Some Kennedy advisers thought Meader's album should be banned from broadcast. "Kennedy found it very amusing. He rose above it," says Cull, adding that Kennedy's staff nonetheless initiated measures to prohibit presidential impersonations from advertising.

But expanded TV coverage of national politics, Kennedy's growing popularity and comedy albums coming into their own made Meader's album the fastest-selling pre-Beatles LP (200,000 copies the first week, 7.5 million total).

Since then, presidential impersonations have been more of a force than a political sideshow "when it matters most," says Cull. "Presidential impersonation is an amazing window on the development of the chief executive."

Think David Frye's paranoid and insecure Nixon during Watergate insisting, "I am the president!"

During the '60s, Frye was the first impressionist to do several politicos -- Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Ronald Reagan and his uncanny "make no mistake about it!" Nixon. So on-target, so unforgiving.

"To do satire, it is a fine line," he says. "And if you cross it, it's a dangerous thing."

And lately, Frye can't help but think about toeing that fine line again. Now "semi-retired" and living in Las Vegas, he's still perfecting his "Bush Junior."

"It's like reliving what happened with Nixon," he says. "And that's when you can really take things to an extreme -- and when impressionists have more fun."