As Ever, the Laugh’s on Candidates

A funny thing’s happening on the way to the election. But, then again, a funny thing always happens on the way to the election--provided, of course, you happen to think that this sort of thing is funny:

“You hear about this?” Jay Leno, host of “The Tonight Show,” cracked. “Earlier today computer hackers actually shut down Al Gore for two hours.”

Now, this story is not simply an excuse to be terribly tasteless in print over and over again, in case you were wondering whether to read further. (Leno again: Steve Forbes has officially dropped out of the presidential race. He said he wanted to spend more time with his servants.)

Political humor, in fact, is a base barometer of any election cycle. It has been helped along by candidate visits to the very stages where they are skewered most; Democrat Bill Bradley and Republican John McCain appeared with Leno--as did Gore two weeks ago--while former GOP candidate Dan Quayle dropped in on “Late Night” with David Letterman. “I’m here,” he said, “for my apology.”

The stream of jokes should hit full force in coming months, as the race intensifies and polished wingtips find their ways into fast-moving mouths and the first anonymous jokes about the men who would be president start zipping across the country via e-mail.

For better or worse, these authorless zingers--usually crude, sometimes potent enough to end a career--are evidence that a candidate has actually arrived in the national consciousness and, in fact, that the nation is conscious to begin with. Think Gary Hart. Think Dan Quayle. Think Bill Clinton. Think Dan Quayle.

Dan Quayle walks into a tattoo parlor. Quayle: “Could you put a mark on my forehead, the kind that Mr. Gorbachev has?” Manager: “We can, but why do you want to?” Quayle: “Last week Mr. Gorbachev was in town, and I said to him, ‘What’s the secret of your success?’ He tapped himself on the forehead and said, ‘You’ve got to have something up here.’ ”

UC Berkeley folklorist Alan Dundes, whose all-time favorite political joke you’ve just read, refers to America’s water-cooler comedians as “the folk” and notes that they “are certainly willing to toss a grenade or nail a particular candidate.” The folk love underdogs, a particularly American trait, so “anyone who’s a front-runner is fair game,” he says. “But they have to be sufficiently interesting and have enough perceived flaws.”

No one running for America’s highest office is quite there yet, but then the humor bar has been raised pretty high in recent years, with Quayle’s never-ending verbal missteps and Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes. Those who study jokes for a living have yet to hear the names of Bush, McCain, Forbes or Bradley taken in vain out there in the ether.

In the last year, more than 2,000 political jokes have been beamed out of America’s television sets from 11 p.m. onward. The man with the biggest bull’s-eye on his back? Clinton, of course.

Leno, who can barely get through a monologue without a Clinton joke (“There’s a million of ‘em!”), says the president’s saga “has all the elements people like: good-looking, powerful, sex. . . . Most people don’t have nuclear weapons or huge economic problems, but everyone knows a husband like Bill.”

While First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who’s running for Senate in New York, comes in No. 2 in the comedic kick-me derby, Gore has been targeted by late-night comics more than any other presidential candidate, according to tallies by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs, which studies politics and the media. But he is followed closely by Bush.

Initially, most Bush jokes focused on rumors--unproved--of drug use. (Craig Kilborn: George W. Bush said today that parents who grew up in the ‘60s . . . have a responsibility to warn their children of the dangers of drugs, which he said are dependency, isolation and success in politics.)

While drug jokes continue to dog Bush, last year he segued out of Clinton territory (I didn’t inhale) only to land near the edge of the Dan Quayle Black Hole. (What was Quayle’s toughest year? Third grade.)

His vehicle from one form of ignominy to another was the infamous pop quiz on world leaders, a nasty little sucker-punch delivered at a Boston television station.

The comedians went crazy. Conan O’Brien: George W. Bush was unable to name the leaders of Chechnya, India or Pakistan. Even worse, George W. referred to the prime minister of Japan as “that guy my dad threw up on.”

Quipped Leno: I guess the “W.” stands for “What?”

So it wasn’t as bad as misspelling potato. But one thing that humor does is reinforce questions--fairly or unfairly--that already tug at the minds of the masses, like Bush’s intellectual heft.

Bill Maher, host of “Politically Incorrect,” argues that the public pays less attention to the real news than “the news that’s filtered through people who make it entertaining.” When disc jockeys and late-night comedians seize on a particular image of a candidate, “it’s like wolves with a carcass. They will pick at it until it’s just bone.”

Until his first-place finish in New Hampshire, McCain had largely escaped the late-night monologues. After all, what’s so funny about five years in a prisoner of war camp?

Then again, McCain’s time in Hanoi didn’t stop Maher from commenting on his strong showing in the Delaware primary: John McCain, the guy with the big mo’, he did not even campaign there. He said, “You know, any time I step in a place that small, I get flashbacks.”

Joseph Boskin, editor of “The Humor Prism in 20th Century America,” notes that McCain has compounded jokesters’ difficulties by making fun of himself and his temper. Such deflection, he says, proves “that humor is power.”

Democrats are targets too, of course, but historically their comedic calamities are terribly tough to chronicle in a broad-sheet read at the breakfast table.

Think Bill Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky. OK, don’t.

Think John F. Kennedy, who ran against Richard Nixon in 1960, when this joke (rating: PG-13) was making the rounds: Mrs. Nixon was talking to Mrs. Kennedy one day and boasted, “You know, Jackie, last night I slept with the future president of the United States.” And Mrs. Kennedy replied: “That Jack will do anything for votes.”

The most durable political humor tends to live far longer than the candidate it lampoons; that Kennedy joke actually surfaced nearly 100 years earlier, supposedly told by President Lincoln, referring to a local race in Illinois.

The current round of jokes won’t end with the November election or even next January’s inauguration. Just the opposite. “People wait until they vote a candidate into office before they get nasty,” says Matthew Felling, media director for the Center for Media and Public Affairs.

“Once you have a candidate in office, all of their quirks are magnified further.”

Consider the beleaguered Harry S. Truman, whose rap in the difficult post-Franklin D. Roosevelt years was as an ineffectual milquetoast. “To err is Truman,” it was said. “I’m just mild about Harry,” quipped the folk.

Two guys in fedoras are talking politics. First man: Truman is the weakest president since Franklin Pierce. Second man: What did Pierce ever do? First man: That’s the point.

Ba-dum-bum.