Critic’s Notebook: Comedy and McCain

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Thursday was comedy night in the 2008 presidential race. John McCain made a much-delayed appearance (his 13th lifetime) on CBS’s ‘Late Show with David Letterman,’ then moved on to the annual The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, where he shared a dais and alternated monologues with opponent Barack Obama. Joe Biden was a guest on ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.’ Sarah Palin was nowhere to be seen, but she was certainly talked about and is scheduled to appear -- as Tina Fey, perhaps? -- on ‘Saturday Night Live’ this weekend. Through it all -- and through the Thursday prime-time edition of ‘SNL’ -- one name rang out again and again: Joe the Plumber.

‘The road to the White House runs right through here,’ Letterman has been saying of his show, and he has a point. The late-night talk circuit, of which Letterman is king -- in terms of authority, if not ratings -- became a necessary destination for presidential candidates during this extremely long election cycle. Not just because that’s where the young people supposedly get their news nowadays: By showing up to brave the barbs, candidates signal that they can take (and make) a joke; it’s a token of humility. And Americans find it hard to take seriously people who take themselves too seriously.

Among all this cycle’s candidates McCain seems the most willing to roll up his sleeves for comedy, to play along with the joke. (‘I ask you what should we be looking for in our next president,’ he said on ‘SNL’ early in the campaign. ‘Certainly someone who is very, very, very old.’) Obama has a genial self-deprecating sense of humor, but he is less comfortable with play-acting: In a 2007 ‘SNL’ sketch he showed up at a Halloween party in a mask of his own face. ‘I enjoy being myself,’ he said to Amy Poehler’s Hillary Clinton. ‘I’m not going to change who I am just because it’s Halloween.’ That seems about right.

McCain actually hosted ‘SNL’ in 2002 -- seriously hosted it, delivering the opening monologue and appearing in several sketches. He played John Ashcroft (‘As Americans, we will never truly be free until each and every one of us is afraid of being thrown in jail’), Irish author Frank McCourt and Amy Poehler’s creepy husband (wearing a wig and false beard) in a Lifetime movie takeoff. (If he wants people to think of him as a maverick, this is the reel he should be showing.)

His ‘Letterman’ makeup test was more troubled. Letterman, possibly the TV star most comfortable on television, makes the rules in his world, and woe betide those who try to change them. He is as cool as Obama, and funnier of course, but he makes pique work for him as well. Owing his audience nothing but entertainment -- which to a great degree amounts to Dave being Dave -- he’ll ask whatever questions he likes, and ask them again and again if the answer doesn’t satisfy him.

Letterman had barely let up on McCain in the weeks since the senator canceled an appearance, supposedly as part of suspending his campaign. (‘Are we suspending it because there’s an economic crisis,’ Letterman wondered, ‘or because the poll numbers are sliding?’) And McCain was, perhaps unfairly, already the candidate easiest to mock, because of his age -- comedy writers pen those jokes in their sleep -- and because he has often looked unhappy, annoyed, or just strange in the debates. (I have to wonder, though, after watching him on ‘Letterman,’ whether some of those looks weren’t failed attempts to be funny.)

‘Can you stay?’ Letterman asked as McCain seated himself Thursday night.

‘Depends on how bad it gets,’ answered McCain, who had greeted the host with a ‘please don’t hit me’ gesture. ‘I have a son in the Marine Corps and I asked him to Fed-Ex me his helmet and flack jacket. But it didn’t get here in time.’

‘I think you’ll be alright,’ Letterman answered. But in fact the host had a lot on his mind. He became a father four years ago, and it’s made him serious about the future. McCain had clearly prepared some laugh lines -- and got laughs -- but though the interview never completely strayed from comedy, he was pushed back onto the issues again and again. ‘I haven’t had so much fun since my last interrogation,’ sighed the candidate.

Subjects included the previous night’s debate, some of which McCain reran in his answers; Osama bin Laden (‘Buddy of mine saw him in Trenton,’ said Letterman’); McCain’s rowdy crowds; negative campaigning (‘There’s millions of words said in the campaign -- come on!’ said McCain, edging toward frustration), and how he chose his vice president (‘Well, we have this dart board’). Letterman kept pressing him on Sarah Palin; it was clear he couldn’t square the choice with the McCain he has often claimed to admire.

‘Let me ask you a question,’ said Letterman. ‘In your guts, in your stomach -- you’re a smart, tough, savvy guy. If I were to run upstairs, wake you up in the middle of the night and say, ‘John, is Sarah Palin really the woman to lead us through the next four, eight years? Through the next 9/11 attack?’’

‘Absolutely,’ said McCain, who made his usual claims for her competence. ‘Have we pretty well exhausted this topic?’ he finally asked.

‘No no,’ Letterman replied. ‘I’m just getting started.’

Over on ‘The Tonight Show,’ Biden had a theory: ‘I don’t think John’s comfortable with the negative stuff.... He seems a little more angry than he usually is.’ You don’t have to agree with McCain’s ideas to sympathize with his distress: He does seem at times to be running in two directions at once, and ripping himself apart at the seams.

As seen on cable news (and all across the Internet) McCain looked and sounded much happier at the civilized white-tie Al Smith dinner. It was a kind of parallel reality -- a place of amity, not enmity, where imprecations were transformed into punchlines and opponents laughed at each other’s jokes. (The gloves came on.) And it allowed McCain to be gracious to Obama and thoughtful about the importance of his candidacy in a way that more adversarial forums have not.

The debates have not worked out well for McCain, and ‘Letterman’ was a mixed bag. But here he had the better jokes and the better delivery. “This is as good a place as any to make a major announcement,” he began. “It’s true that this morning I’ve dismissed my entire team of advisers. All their positions will be held by a man named Joe the Plumber.” Obama played off his Messianic status: ‘Contrary to the rumors that you’ve heard I was not born in a manger; I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet Earth.’ He was fine, but he never really owned his material.

If we chose presidents like we choose the ‘Last Comic Standing,’ this might have been the legendary game-changer McCain has been looking for. But we do not.

-- Robert Lloyd

(Photo courtesy AFP/Getty Images)