The American Spectator

over dancetastic former running back Emmitt Smith: br> /p>

“Emmitt, what can’t you do?” Obama asked as he turned towards the charismatic star. “You haven’t found anything yet. Unbelievable.”

“I’m just glad he’s not running for president,” Obama joked.

br> That’s supposed to be funny, see, because Emmitt Smith isn’t running for president. So Obama can breathe a fake sigh of relief.

Ronald Reagan’s great moment of humor came at a time when he was on the brink of death by gunshot wound. As he was being wheeled into the hospital, he said to his doctors, “I hope you’re all Republicans.” Obama himself mentioned in an editorial meeting with the Reno-Gazette Journal that he aspires to achieve Reagan levels of adoration, but he can’t even crack a joke better than Bill Clinton, a person who never enjoyed the true believer fanbase Obama has had. (Parents, thank your lucky stars.)

When speaking about why he chose Al Gore to tackle federal regulatory reform, President Clinton responded, “I asked him to do it because he was the only person that I could trust to read all 150,000 pages in the Code of Federal Regulations.”

This conveyed to others that Clinton was like you, that is, just as bored by the intricacies as you might be. Reagan also thrived when it came to packaging policy into something fit for public consumption.

By contrast, Obama errs on the side of placing himself along other icons, even if in an almost-self deprecating fashion, such as in this much-referenced line: “I am so overexposed, I make Paris Hilton look like a recluse.”

When McCain’s campaign noticed that similarity themselves, they ran an ad ripping on Obama’s celebrity. But within days, it was Paris Hilton, not Obama, who managed to win the funny contest with a few solid shots about McCain’s age.

Let us be clear. When your sense of humor is eclipsed by the intentional humor of Paris Hilton, you need to hire a better joke-writer. (In fact, John Cleese offered to write for the campaign but was rebuffed.)

Obama’s 26-year-old chief speechwriter Jon Favreau shared a personal anecdote with the New York Times on the theme of what Obama finds funny:

It turns out that when the Chicago White Sox “swept Mr. Favreau’s beloved Red Sox three games to none in their American League 2005 division series,” Obama was in a gloating mood. So he “walked over to his speechwriter’s desk with a little broom and started sweeping it off.”