Kennedy: The Commander-in-Chief of Presidential Wit

In his press conference at Kennebunkport after announcing his nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, President Bush made a joke.

Evidently meaning to put the peccadilloes of Chief of Staff John Sununu in perspective, Bush said: “I made a mistake once. It was back in, uh, 1970. . . . “

My wife and I were listening to a tape. She said: “Was that a joke?”

“I think so,” I said. I wasn’t sure.

I tend to judge Presidents by their wit. That’s why, despite his weaknesses, I rate John F. Kennedy tops.

Kennedy had a wit that rose above anything that might have been written for him. It was spontaneous, buoyant, amiable, self-deprecatory and endearing. It has filled a book--”The Complete Kennedy Wit,” edited by Bill Adler (Gramercy).

The Kennedy wit goes back to his service as a PT boat commander in World War II. When his boat was wrecked and his crew was stranded and starving, a rescue boat drew near and its captain shouted: “Hey, Jack--we’ve got some food for you.” Kennedy replied: “No thanks! I’ve just had a coconut!”

After his election a little boy asked him: “Mr. President, how did you become a war hero?” “It was absolutely involuntary,” Kennedy replied. “They sank my boat.”

After the New York Times endorsed Kennedy for the presidency, he said: “In part, at least, I am one person who can truthfully say, I got my job through the New York Times.”

Defending his political career before a university audience, he said: “Remember that it made it possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States Navy to Commander-in-Chief in 14 years with very little technical competence.”

Though he was taciturn, Calvin Coolidge was hardly a stick-in-the-mud. If brevity is wit, Coolidge was the wittiest of them all. A woman who sat next to him at a Washington luncheon said: “Mr. President, I have made a bet that I can get you to say more than two words.” Coolidge said: “You lose.”

He also made the shortest speech in history. Urged by his staff to address a crowd standing by his train at a small town in Missouri, Coolidge reached the observation platform just as the train began to pull away. “Goodby,” he said.

Herbert Hoover had the misfortune to preside over the beginning of the Great Depression. His humor was often unconscious. A few months after the stock market crash, he said: “The worst is over without a doubt.”

Most of the jokes Hoover is remembered for were on him. Asked to throw out the first ball for the 1932 World Series, the President became so distracted by photographers wanting his picture that the game began without the presidential pitch. Later he found the ball in his pocket.

While not the wit that Kennedy was, Franklin Roosevelt loved to laugh, and could receive as well as he gave. In a fourth-campaign speech he countered a Republican slander against his dog Fala by saying, “Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. . . . I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself . . . but I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.”

In “Presidential Anecdotes,” (Oxford), Paul F. Boller Jr. recalls that the novelist Fannie Hurst, after strenuous dieting, was shown into the Oval Office. Roosevelt asked her to pirouette, then said: “The Hurst may have changed, but it’s still the same old fanny.”

Harry Truman had a rough-hewn wit; he also had a thick skin. When his popularity fell he endured such slogans as “To err is Truman” and “What would Truman do if he were alive?”

When Truman said “horse manure” in a speech, a prominent woman complained to Bess Truman. Mrs. Truman said, “You don’t know how long it took me to get him to say that .”

It is hard to remember any Richard Nixon humor through the pall of Watergate. However, he may have avoided being dropped as Eisenhower’s running mate by referring sentimentally in a television speech to his dog, Checkers, as Roosevelt had to Fala. Accused of taking illegal contributions, Nixon said that Checkers was a gift, but he wasn’t going to give him back.

Ronald Reagan’s biographies will be riddled with one-liners. Much of his popularity was due to the wisecracks he delivered from his hospital room after he was hit by an would-be assassin’s bullet. A typical one was: “If I’d had this much attention in Hollywood I’d have stayed there.”

Bush also made a mistake in 1988. He referred to Sept. 7 as Pearl Harbor Day.