No Front-Runner So Far In the Contest for Laughs

By Rachel Dry
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 1, 2007

On the "Late Show With David Letterman" last night, actor Seth Rogen peddled his new movie, "Superbad," the story of two teenage friends on an obscenity-laden journey toward adulthood. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) was also there, pitching a different kind of journey: the one he hopes to make to the White House. He warmed up the seat for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is set to join Dave on Aug. 30.

Officially, the junior senator from New York will be helping celebrate the 14th anniversary of the broadcast, but she'll also be flexing her comedic muscles in front of Letterman's estimated 4 million viewers. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) joined Letterman in April; Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Sen. Chris Dodd have all made appearances; and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced his candidacy on the show set back in February.

Between campaign-produced YouTube videos, late-night television appearances and off-the-cuff sartorial critique, all the candidates are cracking wise while courting votes. Below, in the first installment of an occasional look at comedy on the campaign trail, we asked some experts how well the candidates are doing pitching both policies and punch lines:

· Landon Parvin,

Republican speechwriter, who's helped add humor to speeches for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush:

My favorite piece so far is Fred Thompson on YouTube answering Michael Moore's challenge to a debate on health care. It's not coming out with the humor guns blazing, but it shows his personality.

Sen. Clinton has a hard time doing humor, and she's the one who probably needs it most. She needs to be doing gentle, self-deprecating humor that would soften her edges. It would say: "I am not a power-hungry striver. I have a warmer, gentler, funnier side."

Mitt Romney uses a lot of one-liners, which I don't think is good. I saw a C-SPAN speech of his in South Carolina -- six to eight months ago, I think -- but he's got just one-liner after one-liner at the front.

John Edwards has no sense of humor that I can see.

Barack Obama has a wonderful manner for humor, especially self-deprecating humor. If I were one of his advisers, I would urge him to use that as much as he can.

· Adam McKay, co-founder with Will Ferrell of the Web site Funny

or Die (http://www.funnyordie.com) and director of "Anchorman: The

Legend of Ron Burgundy" and "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby":

For candidates, it's one thing if you make a quip while you're in a press conference or you are just a funny person. Before he was officially running, Barack Obama had a couple of funny comments just because they were so truthful.

But when they try to do comedy while campaigning it has to be so watered down, it ends up coming off cute, which just can't be funny. So maybe some 80-year-old in Iowa is chuckling, but it's never going to be genuinely funny. One of the conditions of comedy is it has to be subversive to be funny, and no candidate is going to be subversive. The whole beauty of the Web is that you can do things that are shocking and opinionated and dirty, and all of those things are things that candidates can't be. They're more like a priest making a joke at Christmas Mass about how the kids want to go home and open their presents.

· Peter Koechley, managing editor of the Onion:

None of the campaigns' attempts at humor are really landing. I think Bush has made our jobs harder and made it a lot harder for other candidates to be funny. When the stakes are so high, when there's so much real tragic news happening, it's hard to be lighthearted and funny. We're choosing a president who's going to have to decide what to do with Iraq. Bush has created a situation where it's hard to show a fun side. So Hillary's not trying to come off as really hilarious.