What’s That Smell?

What’s that awful smell? Oh, it’s just the sickly sweet stench of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner still lingering in the air.

It really is true. Barack Obama can staff himself better on nearly all fronts than those who staff him — even comedians.

Barack Obama so outdid Jay Leno, more by accident than by design (I think), at the White House Correspondents Dinner that next year the WHCA should just let Obama do the President’s remarks and the follow-up humor. And yes, I know Leno was not “staffing” Obama, but still …

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It’s totally clear now that President Obama can and should be his own White House Correspondents Dinner comedian.

The President joked about his missing birth certificate, lampooned Politico (whose co-founder John Harris said the “skinned knees were worth it”), called out to the Jonas Brothers with a polite warning that should they get any ideas about Sasha and Malia, he had just two words for them: “predator drones.” He noted that his favorability ratings had fallen — but that Hillary Clinton consoled him, saying “you’re likable enough.”

Steve Clemons is right. It was, like, so totally funny. It was almost funny enough to inspire me to write a sycophantic blog post about it as well, but not quite. The predator drone crack was especially good. Just in case you are too intelligent to pay attention to this event, here’s the full joke:

“The Jonas Brothers are here. They’re out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans. But, boys, don’t get any ideas. I have two words for you — predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking.”

That one was a riot. Obama’s a regular Shecky Greene. Say, do you think he could squeeze in a joke about this next year?

A natural born comedian shouldn’t have any trouble with it at all. I can kick it off right now: How many Pakistanis can we kill in one year with predator drones? Oh, about 700 in 2009, ninety-percent of whom were civilians. But hey, who’s counting? Now just imagine how many we could kill if Pakistan actually ever harmed our country and we really got mad? But seriously, folks… Have you heard about the Guantanamo Bay diet? Withhold the habeas, get the corpus. Take my life, please.