More often than not, the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner is an atavism. More winces than genuine guffaws. Dean Martin’s Friars’ Roast it isn’t.
It once worked as a uniquely humbling American reminder that the most powerful position in the world is a function of election — not inheritance or coup. Nobody in a democracy is above being taken down a peg or two. It’s conceptually healthy.
During the height of the Cold War, it spoke volumes that the West Germans referred irreverently — but good-naturedly — to Chancellor Brandt as “Schnapps Willy.” No way East Germans would have treated Brandt’s counterpart, the hard-line, Soviet puppet Erich Honecker, with endearingly egalitarian punch lines.
The formula for the overly long, often tedious Correspondents’ Dinner calls for a professional comedian. That’s a big part of the problem. The comedian is either over-the-top disrespectful to the office of the presidency — think Stephen Colbert and George W. Bush — or safely lame — think Jay Leno the other night. Indeed, he did work in a mother-in-law joke.
As for the president, if it’s not John Kennedy or Barack Obama — or Dana Carvey channeling George Bush Sr. — it looks like what it is: an obligatory effort by someone with more important things to do.
Having said that, last Saturday’s Dinner did showcase President Obama at his spot-on delivery best. His timing was prime time, his material a combination of the self-deprecating, which everyone likes, and quality zingers, which all but the targets like. A couple of Obama outtakes:
* “Odds are that the Salahis are here. There haven’t been people more unwelcome at a party since Charlie Crist.”
* “I happen to know that my approval ratings are still very high in the country of my birth.”