Shove over Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama has a new trophy for the mantelpiece — an Emmy Award. His win for Outstanding Narrator for his work on the Netflix documentary “Our Great National Parks,” makes him the first former president to have ever won an Emmy in a competitive category.
While Obama is the first president to mark that milestone, another commander-in-chief beat him to the Emmy punch by some 66 years — Dwight D. Eisenhower received a Primetime Emmy Governors Award in 1956 for his “appreciation of television,” the year after he held the first televised press conference. While live press conferences weren’t the norm until John F. Kennedy’s presidency, the Television Academy apparently appreciated Eisenhower’s efforts to boost the up-and-coming medium all the same.
If it’s any consolation to Obama, he did win the Nobel Peace Prize, for which Eisenhower was only nominated. Obama also has two Grammys going for him, so he’s still the only former president halfway to an EGOT. And, more importantly, perhaps, the first ever PENG. (President, Emmy, Nobel and Grammy-winner.)
To date, former president Donald Trump has two Emmy nominations with no wins.
