I’m not a big George Bush fan.
And according to the most recent polls, I’m not exactly in the minority.
But, Dubya is already yesterday’s news.
And I’m not in a mood to do any Bush bashing just for the sport of it.
Actually, at this point, putting him down would be a little like making jokes about Britney’s parenting skills.
Way too easy.
I will say this, though.
His total incompetence for the past eight years aside, one of the real reasons I never really liked the guy was that he’s just not very funny.
Not that I feel like qualifying for a spot on Last Comic Standing should be a criteria for picking a leader of the free world.
But a little wit lightens the load, you know?
And, if memory serves, almost all the residents of 1600 Pennsylvania in recent past had, at least, a witty side.
Bill Clinton was a pretty funny fellow.
I mean, come on, you can’t run a country, score with interns, avoid impeachment and stay married to Hillary without having a pretty finely tuned sense of humor.
Not to mention how he changed the “tone” of presidential campaigning back in 92.
Remember how he put on the shades and played the sax on “Arsenio”?
People look back at that and mark it as the beginning of hipper and looser style of running for President.
And ever since then, the bets are off.
This year, Hillary, Barack and John have been on everything from Dave to Jay, from The Daily Show to The Colbert Report and not just to mouth some lofty chunk of their stump speeches, either.
Each of the three have shown some pretty serious comic chops.
I can’t tell you why, but I find it kind of cool that the three top contenders for the highest office in the land don’t have to sweat being out of work if they don’t make it to the White House in November.
Any one of them could work Catch A Rising Star tomorrow.
And, to be sure, Bill did maintain a pretty cool persona when he was running lo those 16 years ago.
But, he wasn’t the first “stand up” politician.
Not by a long shot.
No, I think the case can be made that the guy who gets credit for that is, as life’s irony rears its head, a guy who not only wasn’t noted for his sense of humor, but wasn’t witty enough to charm his way out of the lie that he got caught in.
Richard Nixon.
Huh? You say?
1968. Nixon was running against Hubert Humphrey after having been outspent and maneuvered by JFK in 1960 and bitchslapped by the people of California in the Governor’s race in 1962.
And Mr. Frown Never Turned Upside Down (unless he was faking the smile) took a big ole pin and stuck it right into the balloon of his own pomposity as he appeared on national prime time television and uttered the phrase that will outlast “give me liberty or give me death”, “damn the torpedos” and “the buck stops here” combined.
“….sock it to me!”
Or, more correctly, in Nixon’s totally surreal and, yet endearing, reading of the line:
“…sock it to ME?”
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In may have inadvertently done as much to elect Richard Nixon president in 1968 as the TV debates with JFK did to keep him from being elected in 1960.
Not sure how that plays in the whole ledger of their lives.
That’s their problem.
And beside the point.
The point being that if you’re going to give credit where it’s due to the
candidate who changed presidential campaigning from a stuffy, pompous,
rigid exercise in letter of the law adherence to a looser, funkier, funnier,
kinder, more human endeavor, you gotta give props where props belong.
Ladies and gentlemen…the comedy stylings of Richard Nixon.
Don’t forget to tip your waiters and waitresses.
Turns out, of course, that Nixon wasn’t much of a President.
Then, again, turns out that George W. hasn’t been much of one, either.
At least Nixon was funny.
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