"The President Has a Great Sense of Humor"

Tim Russert closed this morning's edition of NBC's Meet The Press with a jovial interview with Steve Bridges, the comedian and political impressionist who performed with George Bush at last Saturday's White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Bridges and Bush stood side by side at matching podiums, with Bush delivering a standard political speech and Bridges interjecting with comical 'Bushisms.'

This morning's Meet the Press interview was unintentionally riveting – I watched it standing up, unable to take my eyes from the screen – for two reasons: first, because it was the latest example of Mr. Russert's staggering cowardice as a journalist, and second because of Mr. Bridges' assessment of Mr. Bush as a 'great guy' who was 'endearing' and had a 'great sense of humor.'

The accusation of cowardice directed at Mr. Russert has largely to do with his choice of interviewees: The Bridges/Bush routine was only the opening act for last weekend's headliner, Comedy Channels' Stephen Colbert, who delivered a twenty minute mock-adulatory speech wherein he mercilessly ticked off many of the President's high crimes and misdemeanors, as well as those of the media lapdogs sitting in the room, while the lapdogs and their Leader sat for the most part in glazed, uncomfortable, infuriated silence. (Transcript here and elsewhere, discussion, video, etc. here.)

But I'd like to address the issue of the President's 'great sense of humor.' George W. Bush does, indeed, have a 'great' sense of humor – or, to be more precise, a 'sickeningly inappropriate' one. Although there are many examples available, I've always felt that one in particular is all that is needed to make the point.

In September, 1999 George W. Bush, Governor of Texas and Republican Primary candidate, was interviewed for Talk Magazine by conservative Tucker Carlson. Convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker had been executed in Texas the previous year, after Governor Bush had rejected her plea for commutation of her sentence to life in prison. (Perhaps because she had become a born-again Christian in prison, her plea was echoed by appeals for clemency from such left-wing bleeding hearts as Pope John Paul II, Newt Gingrich, and Pat Robertson.)

A true comedian, George Bush found the humor in the situation, as described by Tucker Carlson:

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.

This bon-mot ("don't kill me", forsooth!) was, I think, Mr. Bush's moment of 'greatest' humor, approached only by the hilarious slide-show offered up at the 2004 Correspondents dinner, where the leader of the free world and Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces (more about that a bit later) showed us all how funny it can be when you invade a country looking for WMD's, and you've got soldiers and civilians wounded and dying right and left, terrorists and insurgents attracted to the place as if it were some sort of non-adhesive flypaper, ... and you can't find the WMD's! Not anywhere.

What a great guy -- endearing, too!