When Barbara Walters launched the show in 1997, it was seen as mildly scandalous that someone with her journalistic prestige would go to daytime TV; when President Barack Obama appeared on it in 2010, there were sniffs about the “dignity [of] the presidency.” Now ambitious politicians see The View as a must-do. Why? Because “it offers the tantalizing promise of reaching the unconverted.” – The New York Times Magazine