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George W. Bush was Funnier

Posted by TONY CAMPBELL, Columnist in At TMV, Politics.
May 12th, 2009 | Comments

In all of the dust that has been flung around following the comedic stylings of Wanda Sykes, one little point has been overlooked… President Obama gave a mediocre performance at the WHC Dinner.

The first four minutes of the speech were highlighted by the Sasha & Malia grounding over Air Force 1 and Rahm Emanuel being tripped up by using the word day after mother (instead of his usual word of choice).

One of the more interesting moments is when President Obama addresses RNC Chair Michael Steele. Obama takes a poke at Steele’s attempt to make the Republican Party more attractive to young black people by stating “Michael Steele is in the house tonight. Or as he would say, ‘in the heezy.’ What’s up?” Is this what happens when the leaders of the two major political parties are both black men? I was told that “Black on Black Crime” was a hoax… I guess it only exists at the highest levels of government.

The rest of the speech had its’ moments but for all of the good press Obama has gotten, the overall performance was so-so… after all, as Obama stated at the beginning of his speech “I am Barack Obama. Most of you covered me. All of you voted for me.” He had a partisan crowd that was tailored made for his remarks as opposed to his predecessor, George W. Bush.

I looked at last year’s farewell speech of President Bush, and I have to say that although Barack Obama is a much better communicator than George W. Bush, Bush has a much better delivery and is more comfortable in this surrounding than Obama (even in a room full of people that didn’t like him and didn’t vote for him).

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I am not a Bush apologist by any stretch of the imagination. Watch the video, take your political bias out of the equation and decide for yourself. In my view, Bush is more relaxed, has a better command of timing and is funnier.

As President Obama stated in his remarks, “I have to confess I really did not want to be here tonight, but I knew I had to come — just one more problem that I’ve inherited from George W. Bush.” It is a problem that is inherited from Bush because Bush was very good at making fun of himself while Obama is too cool to allow himself to let his hair down.

  • CorHart
    You know, after George Bush creates a video of himself keystone kopping all over the White House looking for missing WMDs, while soldiers and civilians were (and they still are) dying because of that oh-so-funny mistake, I'm sorry, it takes balls, real giant-sized titanium balls, to claim that anything George Bush did was "funny".

    He was a monster made more monstrous by his blistering ignorance of that fact.
  • D. E.Rodriguez
    Tony:

    I guess, it's all in the eye of the beholder. I found Obama's performance so much more genuine and lighthearted than any of Bush's performances. But, again, that's just my opinion.

    Anyway, with respect to what have been called "inappropriate" comments, especially the one (not by Obama) on Limbaugh being the 20th hijacker and dying of kidney failure, of course they were definitely inapproriate.

    But looking back at some of Bush's inappropriate performances, CorHart just stole my thunder.

    Bu let me say it anyway.

    I will never forget, nor forgive, Bush's atrocious so-called joke on "looking for WMDs under his desk, here, there, everywhere---no WMD's here, no WMDs there.." while as CorHart says thousands of our finest had already died, and are still dying, for that lie.

    Unforgivable!
  • JackAbramoff
    Thought Dubya's timing was completely off, not exactly sure how you and I could have possibly been watching the same video.
  • yaboo
    You have to be well disposed to Bush to even stomach that. Up to about 4:30 it was atrocious, then he was just introducing a bunch of clips from other years, then maybe two acceptably well-timed and well delivered lines near the end, with bad material. Overall really quite bad. He does seem comfortable, but with the material that weak, I think that's even off-putting. I can't imagine too much worse.

    Bush relies on a kind of silent smirking to let jokes gently settle on the audience, but the material is weak ba-dum-dum stuff. If you are not especially well disposed to Bush, you will find that really off-putting. I didn't think any of the material was strong either, though that's probably not his fault. The only thing well suited to him was showing Jeb's baby picture, which he did well. Of course, the joke that somehow he was "mad" at his brother about the recount seems totally weird. Maybe you have to be a righty or something to understand that.

    Two opposite types of people are in the room, so it's the end of the world--my dog is named spot, aren't I creative... maybe not his fault. There's nothing the least bit edgy or funny there.
  • yaboo
    O.K., now I watched both and there just must be no accounting for taste. Obama's stuff was much edgier, braver, and funnier. The Bush stuff is so bland. I can't even really analyze the styles, because the material is of such higher quality. But to say "Bush was funnier?" Egads. Next.
  • pacatrue
    I'm going with Bush is funnier just because it's fun to debate the comedic stylings of our Presidents.
  • Ricorun
    Arguably, this is a venue where John McCain would have glowed. And I think the "real giant-sized titanium balls" award still belongs to Steven Colbert.
  • marcustulliuscicero
    President Bush is witty, relaxed, nice and authentic. He acts the way he is. Obama acts the way he wants to be.
    That's the difference.
    I miss W.
  • In almost any roast Obama is much more sardonic than others. I think conservatives forget they have created the image of Obama as "the one," and an "egghead professor" as well as "naive idealist." As a result, Obama's conventional self-depreciation is much different from G. W.s and McCain's.
  • CStanley
    The self deprecation thing is the main difference. Obama did the one teleprompter joke and then at the end made a Messiah reference (which was poking fun at his image, but hardly in a depracating way.) Whatever qualities people like so much about Obama, you have to admit that he's certainly not humble (not that most presidents or politicians are, but with Obama any hint of humility seems affected and not very genuine.)

    His comic timing has improved (it was pretty lousy during that event in the campaign where he and McCain both did a schtick.) He seems to have worked it out though and as a head to head comparison here I didn't find Bush's timing to be much better. When Bush does comedy like this though, I have to say I'm reminded of Johnny Carson- it's not that edgy but he seems to be having a lot of fun and to me that's infectious (generally I prefer that kind of humor to 'edgy' stuff, though a few people do edgy well.)
  • Nonsense, Obama did plenty of jokes about his position at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner -- his looks, ayers, his name, messiah stuff etc.

    I think it is a bias issue in regards to the deprecation, Obama's supposed flaws are his :
    arrogance, professorial nature, naviete, the teleprompter, etc.

    He made fun of the teleprompter bit x2 , the airplane snafu, press adoration, meeting with captain hook, building a library tribute to his first 100 days etc.

    I think a lot of it just has to do with taste and bias.

    Which of the last presidents has been humble in the 20th-21th Century?

    The only three I can think of are Truman, Ford and Carter, the latter two of which were both horrible presidents but seemed quite humble.
  • fraida
    I watched Obama but thought he was very bland compared to Bush.
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