Panelists at Sunday night's American Forum agreed that this year's election is "grim and lacking humor" common in past elections and the desire for a funnier election is palpable.
The forum "Presidential Shtick and Political Speechwriters" discussed the importance of political humor for politicians. It was presented by the School of Communication as one of the events at this weekend's SOC Political Comedy Festival at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring, Md.
"Humor is kind of a rare opportunity for presidents and important people to use an underutilized voice in political dialect and to say things that never get otherwise said," said Mark Katz, former Clinton speechwriter and author of "Clinton and Me."
Moderator and AU journalism professor Jane Hall asked Katz when he gave Clinton a line at time when people may not have liked him as much. According to Katz, Clinton was a talented person who had a natural sense of humor. However, he would later mention that Clinton would have to learn about self-deprecating comedy rather than the insult humor that he grew up with Arkansas.
Katz remembered when he worked on his first speech with Clinton on the White House Correspondent Dinner of 1993 and it was after the first 100 days into his presidency. He said it was a very difficult time for Clinton with issues such as gays in the military, getting a haircut on the Los Angeles International Airport tar mack and an economic stimulus plan that crashed and burned.
Clinton had the courage to stand up and say, "I'm not doing too bad," said Katz, who said that Clinton pulled off the line, "After his first 100 days, [President] William Henry Harrison had already been dead for 68 days."
Meanwhile, AU alumnus Patrick Butler, vice president of the Washington Post Company and a former speechwriter for Gerald Ford, recalled a time when comedian Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live was making fun of Gerald Ford's supposed clumsiness. According to Butler, SNL, which started on NBC in 1975, came right in the middle of the administration, and inaugurated political satire on American television.
Chase portrayed Ford as a "bumbling, stumbling chief of staff," Butler said. He remembers that during a 1976 dinner, the president announced that Chase was a guest of the president saying Chevy was a guest of the president, calling him "a very funny suburb."
Although Ford wasn't pleased, generally speaking he took it in good humor, Butler said.
Hall turned her questions to Terry Edmonds, who serves as Sen. John Kerry's chief campaign speechwriter and worked in the White House during Clinton's second term. She asked him about Kerry's decision to be on John Stewart's "Daily Show" to speak about the Swift Boat Veteran's accusations and if he had planned any jokes beforehand.
Edmonds said that he was not involved but most often they turn to individuals like Katz to provide jokes.
"Candidates usually go on prepared to take on serious issues," Edmonds said about politicians who go onto comedy shows. " They're not actually trying to be funny."
A lot of times, said Edmonds, it can backfire if the candidate is trying too hard to get laughs and with shows like that, candidates should not go into comedy shows with a pocket full of jokes.
Meanwhile, Chriss Winston, the first woman to head the White House Office of Speechwriting and worked with former President George H. W. Bush, was asked the elder Bush's sometimes humorless presidency.
Winston disagreed, saying that Bush was privately funny, loved one-liners and had a sarcastic, cynical wit. However, she says that his speeches suffered not because of his humor but because speechmaking wasn't his favorite thing to do.
"He wasn't a stand-up comedy kind of guy," Winston said. However, she said that Bush Sr. used humor in his speeches and had the ability to ad-lib one-liners in his remarks.
"The purpose of a good stand-up routine or joke is the same purpose of a good speech," Edmonds said, " That's to make it pitty, pungent and quotable ... so that people will walk away with a good feeling and impression of the candidate."
Butler added that one of the challenges facing writers for politicians was to make them understand the cultural and generational reference of jokes that they make.
The panelists also discussed if some issues like Osama Bin Laden were off-limits to humor. In one case, Hall asked them their thoughts on a comedy bit where the younger Bush received criticism for jokingly checking for weapons of mass destruction under his desk in the Oval Office. The speakers agreed that that particular joke might have been too far.
"If it's good, it has to be edgy," Edmonds said. " But there's a difference between being edgy and going over the cliff. But sometimes you try too hard or you pick a subject that deals with life and death, you might be going over the cliff."
"If I have to ask myself if this really is funny, then it's probably not really funny and I think you should just ditch it," she said. However, Butler understands that Bush was probably trying to take some of the pressure off the situation.
"One of the uses of political humor in this town is to disarm one's criticisms and to deal with sometimes very serious issues in a way to take it off the table or debate, I think this particular instance, it didn't work," Butler said.
But Watson said that Bush redeemed himself during the Republican National Convention when he made fun of himself, his swagger and his difficulty speaking by saying, "Arnold Schwarzenegger is correcting his language."
Meanwhile, Hall asked the panelists if they had any ideas to help Kerry's personality come off better to the public. While many wanted to see a more personable Kerry who reaches out to America, Katz offered this joke of his own for the senator as a comeback to "Bush's attempt to marginalize him as a hopelessly liberal Massachusetts Democratic."
"It's true, I once served as a Mike Dukakis Lieutenant Governor, and that credential alone gives me more experience with tanks and artilleries than our current president," Katz said.
The panelists said that some subjects are off the table and there is indeed a certain way that some jokes are carried off. In the issue of Monica Lewinsky, Katz said that it was "political science fiction."
"You can do jokes about the smoke, but not the fire," Katz said.
Meanwhile, both Butler and Winston said that it was no joking matter for Republicans
In another instance, a question was posed about the effect of the Bush twins and their speech at the convention. Everyone at the panel said that their speech did not come off well.
"That speech couldn't have been more lame, if they had had been triplets," Katz said.
Winston said that the girls should have stuck to talking about their mom and dad instead of trying their hands at stand-up comedy.
However, it can be concluded that political humor is indeed "extremely cautious by nature," Katz said. "Politicians know that a good joke lasts a day ... and a bad joke will be reprinted in your obituary."
The forum was broadcasted live on AU's NPR affiliate WAMU 88.5 FM and co-sponsored by The Kennedy Political Union and The Graduate Leadership Council.
