Conservatives Fling Well-Honed Barbs at Humor Conference

With impish glee and acid wit, former Vice President Dan Quayle and conservative humorist P.J. O’Rourke lobbed verbal spitballs at the Clinton Administration on Tuesday in a daylong humor conference at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.

O’Rourke skewered the President’s health care reform proposal as the bloated product of a pre-exam “dorm room bull session.”

“They think that if they just stay up late enough, there’ll be human rights in China,” O’Rourke said of Clinton and his staff.

“I don’t know if I should take health advice from a President with a waistline like a Beautyrest mattress, the jogging gait of a beached sea lion and the sleeping habits of a teen-age slumber party,” O’Rourke told more than 300 guests.

Titled “Do Conservatives Have a Sense of Humor?” the conference answered its own question with lectures by O’Rourke, Quayle and former Reagan staff member Lyn Nofziger, and musical political spoofs by the Capitol Steps.

Nofziger recalled quips by conservatives such as Herbert Hoover, who said of reporters: “Every President should be allowed to shoot two a year, without explanation.”

And he told the crowd that Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater once sought entry to a golf course that excluded Jews, asking: “What about if I play nine holes? I’m only half-Jewish.”

Reagan, who once defined status quo as “this mess we’re in,” was the wittiest conservative President, even in the face of peril, Nofziger said.

Shot in a 1981 assassination attempt, Reagan bombarded the hospital staff with one-liners, and Nofziger recalled repeating them to an anxious press corps.

Surrounded by emergency room doctors, Reagan had cracked: “I hope you’re all Republicans,” Nofziger recalled.

“Those were the remarks that would let the country know that President Reagan is OK and that everything would be fine,” Nofziger said. “Because up till that point, everyone thought Al Haig was in charge,” he said, referring to the then-secretary of state’s take-power speech.

The Capitol Steps, a satiric singing group, took a more melodic approach to their humor, aping Clinton as a potbellied philanderer, Hillary Clinton as a commodity-trading Lady Macbeth, and Ross Perot as a jug-eared whiner in a watermelon-green 98-gallon hat.

“Suture yourself--at home; suture yourself--in front of the family,” sang Brad Van Grack and Brian Ashe, satirizing the Clinton health care plan to the tune of “Consider Yourself.”

Then Quayle took the stage amid boisterous applause and a standing ovation.

Pronouncing himself glad to be out of the public spotlight for now, Quayle hinted broadly at a 1996 run for the presidency and recalled how his time in office made him the butt of jokes.

“You see where President Clinton said he was the most assaulted American leader? President Clinton, read my book, “ Quayle said, referring to “Standing Firm,” his autobiography, autographed copies of which were snatched up by the audience between speakers.

Quayle also joked about his career as second fiddle to the President, recalling that the vice president’s office was decorated with the bust of Henry Wilson, Ulysses S. Grant’s second vice president, whom Quayle said “died there. He took a nap and never woke up.”

But it was O’Rourke’s blistering attack on the Clinton presidency that served as a political rallying cry for the Republicans in the room hoping for a victory in coming elections.

“Clinton is a disaster for the rest of our country, but he is meat for our table,” O’Rourke told the group.