by Joe Snyder
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I sense that Kathy thinks I write too many serious columns, so this week it’s back to humor, a little funny stuff.
For instance, just before the funeral service, the undertaker went up to the quite elderly widow and asked: "How old was your husband?" "Ninety-eight" she replied. "Two years older than me." "So you’re 96 the undertaker commented. She responded: "Hardly worth going home, is it?"
January through April can launch a political star. The right joke can launch a political career. Jokes are serious business in politics. The annual Gridiron dinner can make or break a politician. For instance, at the Gridiron dinner in 1958 Sen. John Kennedy, in the hunt for the presidency, arose from his seat after a skit roasted him for using his father’s money to buy his first Senate race. No fools, the Kennedy team had anticipated this line of attack. In his response he "read" a telegram from his father: "Jack, don’t spend one dime more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I pay for a landslide."
Humor in politics isn’t always that scripted. President Lincoln was well known for his wryness which sometimes got him in trouble. Critics heavily criticized him for "inappropriate humor" in a time of war, though some of that might have been targeted toward Congress. He once said of Congress: "I have been told I am on the road to Hell, but I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it."
With the advent of radio and, later, television, humor has taken on new and powerful significance in Washington. Quite surprisingly, all of a sudden humor and whimsy could be amplified and greatly multiplied to a much wider audience. It permitted politicians to say things that otherwise might not get said.
Some of you will recall that President Reagan changed the momentum in his race against Walter Mondale with one joke, countering the suggestion he was too old for the job. "I will not exploit, for political purposes, the youth and inexperience of my opponent."
President Clinton’s first 100 days in office were rough, from Federal raids in Waco, Texas, to gays in the military as well as a $200 haircut. He responded to this with a joke at the White House Correspondents’ dinner with a dead-pan face: "I don’t think I’m doing all that bad. After his first 100 days in office, William Harrison had already been dead for 68 days."
Politics! Yes, it has its faults in this era of buying and selling public offices, but it will
do us all good to remember if we see politics for what it is – a competition for public office by characters who, with some exceptions, got their offices with no more qualifications than a gift of gab.