George Bush, comedian

[Brown]

President Bush made a speech at Quantico, Virginia today (Sept. 10) (text here, reg. req'd) (http://nytimes.com/2003/09/10/politics/10WIRE-PTEX.html). Considering the somber purpose of the address (the wickedness of September 11, 2001), it surprised me to find the president apparently starting off with some jokes:Quantico is also known as the crossroad of the Corps, since so many Marines passed through the Marine Corps University here. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Quantico, population 561 fine souls, is said to have the highest number of barber shops per capita....In discussing Tom Ridge, Bush said:I appreciate my friend Tom Ridge. You see, we were both governors at one time. So I got to know him as the governor of a relatively small state, Pennsylvania.Of course, Pennsylvania is not really a small state, but the President was once again apparently joking, calling Pennsylvania "small" in comparison to Texas. And then there was this:I picked a good man who's doing a fine job on behalf of all Americans when I picked John Ashcroft to be the attorney general of the United States.On second thought, that last absurdity might have been uttered in earnest.

When he got to the serious part of the speech, Bush said:The forces of global terror cannot be appeased and they cannot be ignored. They must be hunted; they must be found; and they will be defeated.This is somewhat similar to what Bob Schieffer (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/08/opinion/schieffer/main572126.shtml) wrote three days ago:Terrorists cannot be appeased. They must be defeated.

[Regnad Kcin]

Well, he's no Bob Hope; that much is apparent.

[zakur]

How was his delivery? It's usually pathetic. Some of the jokes his speech writers provide him would actually be funny if he got the delivery right. Letterman features these pathetic attempts nightly in his "George W. Bush Joke That's Not Really a Joke" segment. Keeping with the military theme, here's one from the 8/25 show:

Bush: "I appreciate General Conway. This isn't the first time I've met him. He looks you right in the eye. [He's] the kind of commander I'd like to serve under. It's just that ... he just serves under me."

What's even more pathetic is when he tries to make up his own jokes on the fly. Like this example from the 8/4 show:

Bush: "Bill's been a friend of mine for a long period of time. :applause: He might've invented the word 'piece o' work.'" :Extended shot of Bush chuckling at himself:

There's one that Dave has shown several times wherein Bush appears to be making fun of the word 'Botswana.' He pronounces it in a loud, exaggerated manner, with a funny look on his face. Very bizarre.

Considering that this is the President of the United States, and "Leader of the Free World," they're really hard to watch sometimes.

[Zep]

For goodness sake, America, please elect a person of REAL stature and intelligence next time! Conservative or liberal, doesn't matter. Just no more obvious sock-puppets with too much money!

Sidebar: It appears that senior ranking US military leaders who do well in that field, and who have served in actual combat, seem make the most competent political leaders too. Coincidence? Hal, are you listening?

[Brown]

Originally posted by zakur
How was his delivery? Didn't see the actual speech, just read it as it was transcribed. When you see the speech in black and white, and if notations like "(laughter)" are missing, it sometimes is hard to tell a stupid remark from a joke.

That said, I feel pretty confident that Bush's remark about Marines using a lot of barbershops was a joke, and his jab at Pennsylvania being "small" was a joke. Whether those jokes were appropriate to the occasion, however, was another matter.

I got to thinking that we really haven't had a good joke teller in the White House since Reagan. Clinton was a superb speaker, but he couldn't tell a joke to save his presidential behind. Bush Sr. also had trouble with jokes. Reagan had a lot of jokes, and he told them well. Of course, he told the same jokes over and over and over and over again. (HBO's now-defunct "Not Necessarily the News" once ran clips of several Reagan speeches in which he told the same joke, word for word, over and over and over.) Reagan could not improvise well.

Carter couldn't tell a joke. Neither could Ford or Nixon (Nixon did get one pretty funny jab in at Dan Rather, who responded with a disrespectful insult; and Nixon got huge laughs by saying, in a very serious tone, "Sock it to me?" on "Laugh-In"). Johnson could tell a joke pretty well, but most of his jokes were dirty. But Kennedy truly was a quick and witty guy, and a very good improviser.

[Crossbow]

Well, at least George W. gave the speech without dropping his dog and/or falling off his Segway. Now that's comedy!

[whitefork]

Originally posted by Brown
Reagan could not improvise well.You're not forgetting "we have outlawed Russia" are you? That was a real knee-slapper. And "I'm no linguist but they tell me there's no word for 'svoboda' in English" (or however that one went).

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Crossbow
Well, at least George W. gave the speech without dropping his dog and/or falling off his Segway. Now that's comedy! I think he picked up a few pointers from his dad. I could never put my finger on what made the "vomiting on foreign dignitaries" routine such a classic. Was it the timing? Or the delivery?

[hgc]

Originally posted by Kullervo
You're not forgetting "we have outlawed Russia" are you? That was a real knee-slapper.

...That joke actually was funny; also incredibly foolish and imprudent.

[subgenius]

Reagan's funniest: When told that the country club he was applying for didn't allow actors, he said:
"I'm no actor, and I have 30 films to prove it."

[Brown]

Originally posted by Kullervo
You're not forgetting "we have outlawed Russia" are you? That was a real knee-slapper. I always thought Reagan got a bad deal for that joke (the punchline of which was "We begin bombing in five minutes.") Some people thought he was actually serious, but I recognized that it was a joke right away. There were a hell of a lot of brain-dead-stupid things that Reagan said when he was totally serious, but this bombing joke wasn't one of them.

It was nevertheless an unwise remark, given his office.

My former governor, Jesse Ventura, used to have to say "That's a joke" whenever he made a joke, and it really p*ssed him off. I always picked up on when he was joking and when he wasn't (he actually has quite a good sense of humor), but the "media" would report his jokes as serious comments, which was not fair to him.

Reporting presidential jokes as serious remarks is nothing new. In 1976, President Ford was running for election against Jimmy Carter. Following a newsworthy event that was an embarrassment to Ford (I can't remember what the event was), Ford commented in jest that the incident had cost him a million votes. The story that went out on the wire services said something like: "The President jokingly remarked that the incident had cost him a million votes." At least one prominent newspaper ran the wire service story with the word "jokingly" missing (it had been deliberately stricken by the editors). This was unfair to Ford.

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by Zep
For goodness sake, America, please elect a person of REAL stature and intelligence next time!
Vote
ZEP
For President 2004!