PRESIDENTIAL HUMOR:
ITS IMPORTANCE IN U.S. POLITICS    

When Republican President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) was shot and seriously injured not long after his presidency began in 1981, he reportedly asked his doctors: "Please assure me you are all Republicans." Later he joked about his close encounter with death with his wife, Nancy. "Honey, I forgot to duck," he remarked.

The president's humor -- under the most trying of circumstances -- endeared him to the American people, even to many who disagreed with him ideologically. Americans always have liked presidents who don't take themselves too seriously. For this reason, a good sense of humor is politically important. Some presidents have had one. Others, conspicuously, have not.

Ronald Reagan clearly fell into the category of presidents with a strong sense of humor. Sometimes, the humor was evident in his speeches. But often it was spontaneous, such as in response to a question. One of his most famous lines occurred in a 1984 presidential debate with his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale. Asked whether age would be a problem in a second term, Reagan responded: "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Reagan was the oldest president ever elected. The youngest elected president, Democrat John F. Kennedy (JFK)(1961-1963), was widely admired for his wit. Typical was Kennedy's remark -- now legendary -- made at a dinner for Nobel Prize winners: "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of human knowledge that has ever been gathered at the White House -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

JFK's romance with the English language served his natural sense of humor well. A prodigious reader, he once complained about what he viewed as a decline in the quality of books being published. "I'm reading more and enjoying it less," he quipped. In his formal speeches, Kennedy frequently invoked the memory of another Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR).

FDR (1933-1945), who was president during the two greatest crises the country faced since the Civil War -- the Great Depression and World War II -- also had an impeccable sense of humor, at no time more evident than in the famous Fala episode, in which Roosevelt responded to Republican charges that he used taxpayer money to rescue his pet dog. The speech, which was filmed, shows FDR's incredible timing and delivery, as well as his way with words. He said:

"These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers, in Congress and out, had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him -- at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty-eight million dollars -- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since." FDR's humor disarmed his Republican opponents much more than a righteous defense of his action could possibly have done -- a prime example of the political effectiveness of humor.

FDR was also author of two funny lines about political ideologues. "A conservative," he once said, "is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk forward." But he also said: "A radical is a man who has both feet firmly planted -- in the air." On one occasion, when someone asked him how he held his composure and maintained his humor through the turbulent times of the 1930s and 1940s, the irrepressible FDR, who had contracted polio as a young man, responded: "If you spent two years in bed trying to wiggle your big toe -- after that everything would seem easy."

FDR had a great sense of the irony in life, which he was able to communicate to the common man as well as to the political sophisticate. But it is not just 20th century presidents who used humor to connect with voters. Earlier presidents also knew the power of laughter.

Republican Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865), often thought of as a somber leader, was frequently witty. Once, becoming bored at one of the many ceremonies he felt obliged to attend in his honor, he said: "I feel something like a man being ridden out of town on a rail. If it weren't for the honor of the thing, I'd rather walk."

"You can fool all the people part of the time and part of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time," is a witty remark still often quoted today. But few people know that it was Lincoln who coined the phrase. Once referring to a lawyer, the nation's Civil War president exclaimed: "He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas better than any man I ever met."

Few presidents had a greater wit than Republican President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), author of many a humorous admonition. "A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad;" and, "He has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair," are just two of his more well-known quotes.

Not all the presidents known for their humor are considered accomplished leaders. Republican President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) was reputed to often sleep 12 hours a day and was prone to such few pronouncements that he was known as "Silent Cal." He once remarked, "If you don't say anything, you won't repeat it." At the time, Coolidge was known as rather solemn, but he confronted that criticism head on saying, "I always figured the American people wanted a solemn ass for a president, so I went along with them." When Coolidge died, Dorothy Parker, a writer known for her wicked wit, quipped, "How can they tell?"

Coolidge may not be regarded as one of the country's great presidents, but he is remembered for his sense of humor, according to Vic Fredericks, author of The Wit and Wisdom of the Presidents. Fredericks says the American people are somehow reassured by leaders who can appreciate the less serious side of life -- evidence perhaps of a well-rounded stability that is important in those exercising great power.