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The White House Correspondents' Dinner was last Saturday night. As is the quaint/dismal custom, Barack Obama fulfilled one of the duties of the office of President not thought of by James Madison and performed a comedy monologue. By most nonpartisan accounts it was a reasonably good effort for an amateur.

Comedy is hard. Some Presidents are going to be better at it than others. I don't think it's fair the Leader of the Free World is expected to entertain a group he or she would rather see placed under mass arrest in a popular art form for which they are ill-suited. It ought to be their choice.

If the President is a really good dancer, he could do "Once in Love With Amy" a la Ray Bolger. If she was an amateur magician as a kid, it could be card tricks. An opera excerpt? Ventriloquism? Sure, why not? I personally would like to see the Chief of State try a little improv, just to hear the audience suggestions.

An informed public being the bedrock of democracy, I demand that the interlocutors of the upcoming 12,671,136 presidential debates ask each and every candidate just how they plan to entertain the tuxedoed masses at the 2017 WHCD. We're bound to learn more about them than from boilerplate blah on trade policy.

I make it even money as to whether Rand Paul or Ted Cruz is the first to promise lion taming.

posted by Michael Gee @ 12:41 PM