Politics: No Laughing Matter

Never make people laugh. If you would succeed in life, you must be solemn --solemn as an ass. All the great monuments are built over solemn asses.

In the century since an Ohio Senator offered that advice to future President James Garfield, few have taken it more seriously than the present aspirants to the White House. Whether at the debates or on the stump, both Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford appear to be auditioning for Mount Rushmore. Their few attempts at humor have been elephantine or asinine, a condition that may make nearly half the electorate boycott the polling booths next month.

For the many columnists, cartoonists and comedians who provide the lunatic fringework of political commentary, this year's presidential race has not been a laughing matter. "The banality of the candidates destroys humorous comment," complains Roger Angell, humorist and a fiction editor of The New Yorker. To Johnny Carson, Carter v. Ford is "fear of the unknown v. fear of the known." Chirped veteran Mockingbird Mort Sahl: "Choosing between them is like choosing between Seconal and Nembutal."

Independent Candidate Eugene McCarthy--who says that if Common Cause and the New York Times had been around in 1776, "Thomas Jefferson would have had to change the Declaration of Independence to read, 'We pledge our lives, our sacred honor, and up to $1,000' "--finds the current state of campaign humor "dreadful." Columnist Robert Yoakum polled nearly three dozen White House correspondents for their opinion of Administration humor. Not one rated the Ford funny bone favorably, and Washington Post Reporter Lou Cannon placed it "slightly ahead of the Federal Register and somewhat behind the Congressional Record."

Grandchild Gap. Russell Baker of the New York Times, one of the most literate of campaign jesters, finds that he has been devoting much of his election-year commentary to what he calls "common middle-class living experiences," like tennis, money, the strength of paper towels and the growing shortage of grandchildren ("Our kids aren't having kids any more"). These domestic dissertations, he reports, draw vastly more reader mail than his essays on politics.

Indeed, in his 1976 extracurricular activities, Baker has abandoned politics to write a two-act musical with Composer Cy (Sweet Charity) Coleman about the American family. Baker claims his political ennui is so acute that he pines for ancient villainies. "I miss Nixon," he confesses. "I'd like to get him back. It's possible, you know. He could run for another term." *

Other humorists are less nostalgic --and more bountiful. They have found small seams of giddy gold in Carter's racy Playboy interview, Earl Butz's scurrilous remark, Ford's East European gaffe. If such breakthroughs continue, the contest might yet get something risible visible. "Voter apathy may be peaking too early," deadpans Columnist Bill Vaughan of the Kansas City Star. Adds Boston Globe Cartoonist Paul Szep: "I had to scrounge around for topics, but then in the last few weeks the goofs have been so numerous that my cartoons now come naturally." Among them: a Soviet soldier asking a comrade if he has heard "the latest Polish-Rumanian-Yugoslav joke."

Chain Gang. Meanwhile, Cartoonist Tony Auth of the Philadelphia Inquirer drew rock breakers in an Eastern European chain gang whispering, "President Ford declared our independence. Pass it on." And the Richmond News-Leader's Jeff Mac Nelly put Carter in a Texas barroom full of jug-eared Lyndon Johnson lookalikes; the candidate points to a portrait of L.B.J. over the bar and asks, "Say, who is that nasty-lookin' snake up there? He sure is ugly!"

Carter's admission that lust as well as trust can cross his mind is, according to Art Buchwald, "a gift from the gods." The humorist unwrapped the gift and wrote of his own mate eying him keenly at a party for signs of concupiscence. Chicago Tribune Columnist Michael Kilian examines Carter's statements on tax reform and concludes: "I'd much rather have Jimmy look with lust upon my wife than upon my wallet." Cartoonist Pat Oliphant recently drew Carter hiding among peanut sacks in the attic while Rosalynn went after him with a shotgun. "Jimmy Carter's campaign slogan is 'The White House or Bust,' " says Bob Hope. "Trouble is, he's not sure which he wants."

The New York Daily News's Gerald Nachman jests that Carter has also given an interview to Penthouse, admitting that the candidate "not only coveted his neighbor's wife but also his house, his servant, his ass and his ox," and that he took the Lord's name in vain four times while in the Navy. "Well, nobody's perfect," Nachman imagines Carter explaining, "but sometimes I come pretty doggone close." Chicago Daily News Columnist Mike Royko has an admission of his own about hust on the lustings: "I, too, have looked at women with lust. While wearing dark glasses and without. Straight at them and out of the corner of my eye. Even in the rear view mirror... The last time it happened--and I'll never forget it--was about 25 minutes ago."

The ex-Secretary of Agriculture provided the Butz for a cascade of japes, among them the National Observer's John H. Corcoran Jr.'s report that Butz has left Government for "a life of tight smiles, loose shoes and a warm place to regret his oral indiscretions"; Johnny Carson's desire for "a tight announcer, a loose audience and a warm place to do my monologue"; Washington stand-up comedian and syndicated columnist (100 papers) Mark Russell's information that Midwestern Wasps like Butz and Ford want only "no sex, tight shoes and pay toilets."

Funnily enough, the candidates' political pratfalls were expected a lot sooner. Ford and Carter came into the campaign like Herblock caricatures. The Hard-Nosed Bumbler ("We must either shorten our Presidents or lengthen our helicopter doors," said Bill Vaughan) was opposed by the Born-Again Peanut Farmer ("I pray 25 times a day," Carter was misquoted by Mort Sahl, "but I've never asked God to make me President because I didn't want to take advantage of the relationship"), with teeth like Bugs Bunny ("That man can eat a pineapple through a tennis racket," observed Comedian Pat Paulsen). But Ford's maladroitness as a topic was short-lived, and as Planters and Mimic Rich Little discovered, "There is only so much you could do with peanuts."

Not surprisingly, the candidates' families began to receive more attention --the Fords with their confessions about premarital pot and clandestine sex. And as for the Carters: "There's a mother who was in the Peace Corps, a sister who's a faith healer, another sister who rides motorcycles, a brother who runs a gas station and another who wants to be President," says Russell Baker. "Sounds like a situation comedy."

Many exasperated humorists still find that the primary also-rans offered them richer fare than the winners. Ronald Reagan captured the Texas primary, concluded Mark Russell, because he promised to extend the state's borders southward to Panama and install an exact-change lane in the canal. (Reagan's Panama hat is now worn by California Senatorial Candidate S.I. Hayakawa, who insists: "We should keep the canal. We stole it fair and square.") Chevy Chase on NBC's Saturday Night rather sickly reported that George Wallace, "aiming to set the record straight" about his physical qualifications for the presidency, "demonstrated his strength at a luncheon today by crushing a small child with his bare hands."

Little Town. In the absence of comedy from their leaders, the vice-presidential candidates make small jabs --and oversized targets. Jimmy Carter announced during the Democratic Convention that the Lord would make his preference for running mate known to Carter in a vision, spoofs Mark Russell, and Walter Mondale "snuck into Carter's bedroom at 3 o'clock in the morning covered with luminous paint." The Minnesota Senator, who complains that people used to think Mondale was "a little town near Pasadena," said recently that "if Ford is going to talk to us about jobs, inflation and housing, then we ought to have Idi Amin come over here and talk to us about airport security." Republican Robert Dole recalls a Democrat petitioning his audience: "Gentlemen, let me tax your memories." Another leaped to his feet shouting "Why haven't we thought of that before?"

Ironically, neither Ford nor Carter lacks the makings of an amusing President. The incumbent has "at least two professional gagwriters on his staff --though he sometimes fluffs their lines --and is said to laugh heartily at Chevy Chase's pratfallen Ford impersonations. Ford himself sometimes cracks that his Secret Service contingent receives combat pay when he plays golf. The outcumbent used to tell campaign crowds a story about how, as a boy selling boiled peanuts in Plains, he found there were only two kinds of people in the world, "the good people and those who didn't buy any peanuts." But as Carter admitted to Mike Royko recently: "Somebody analyzed that joke and wrote that it meant I was ruthless. So I decided to be more careful about telling jokes."

Perhaps both candidates sense that the post-Watergate times do not cry out for levity. Yet Carter and Ford are history-minded men, keenly aware that comedy is as much a part of the political process as the polling booth. And if, as Freud observed, laughter is a release from tension, campaign '76 may provide more merriment than a thousand less ambitious situation comedies. "Nobody feels he has any control, and the only way people participate in governments is by laughing at the candidates," theorizes Hal Goodman, one-half of Johnny Carson's writing team. Adds Larry Klein, the other half: "Laughing is the only form of revolt we have in this country."

Campaign Humor. Political humorists are the founding fathers of new plans to ensure voters that revolutionary right in future elections. Mark Russell has launched a campaign for federal quality control of campaign humor at the source. "I'm introducing the Federal Joke Registration Act," he reports, "under which politicians must audition before a Federal Joke Review Board composed of Ed Muskie, John Gronouski, Peter Rodino, Muhammad Ali and Barbara Jordan." And Gerald Nachman has come up with a splendid suggestion. Presidential terms are too long and campaigns too infrequent, he feels, to overcome the soporific aftereffects of a pair like Ford and Carter. "It would be nice to have a new President every year to give us new material," concludes Nachman. "If he were funny enough we could elect him for another year."

*But he could not be elected, according to the 22nd Amendment

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