Bill Clinton appeared on Arsenio Hall during the 1992 campaign while wearing sunglasses and playing the saxaphone.
He was elected twice.
Richard Nixon appeared on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in” in 1968 and said, “Sock it to Me?” Nixon then went on to win a tight election.
Bill Clinton NEEDED to look like he had an entertaining or engaging side. His Arsenio appearance was after he spoke for what seemed like a month at the DNC convention in '88. He was boring and showed virtually no charisma. That late-show appearance was precisely what he needed.
No one outside of Palin's groupy-like-cult thinks she's a serious person. In other words, she needs to stay off of The Tonight Show, The O'Brien Show and the Oprah Show and start demonstrate her intellectual bona fides to the people who are convinced she's a light-weight, which is not an insignificant number of people.