Mirth of a nation: how Bill Clinton learned to tell jokes on himself and get the last laugh.

• Author: Katz, Mark

He opened the door and I jumped to my feet. Watching the president of the United States enter the room is always a startling sight. Of course, the sight he encountered might have caught him off-guard too: a nervous guy in a tuxedo secluded in a dimly-lit holding room with a stack of pages in one hand and an egg timer in the other. Although this was the fifth humor speech I had prepared for President Bill Clinton since he'd taken office, we were about to have our very first one-on-one meeting. The occasion was the remarks he was about to give to the ALfalfa Club, the least known of the four annual Washington humor dinners that take place from January through April--collectively known as the "Silly Season." And on this snowy night in January of 1995, I was there to fulfill the duties of what was probably the oddest job description in town: a presidential joke writer, an adjunct member of the White House speechwriting staff on retainer by way of the Democratic National Committee.

The Alfalfa dinner came just four days after Clinton's third State of the Union address. Already somewhat infamous for his too-long orations, this had been Clinton's longest SOTU yet--one hour and twenty-one minutes--a fact pundits were using as a metaphor for an undisciplined, flailing presidency. In the news cycles that followed the State of the Union, everyone from David Brinkley to David Letterman had something to say about its oppressive length. Of all the facts crammed into his oration, only one resonated the following morning: This speech had been far too long. Yet the White House refused to concede that characterization. Every authorized spokesperson in the building was quick to point out that overnight polling revealed that approval ratings of the speech had come in at 83 percent.

That week, my job was to find the comic premise that would allow the president to score points with his Alfalfa audience--a fraternity of corporate CEOs, federal power brokers, and other establishment stalwarts. My answer was an egg timer. The stage directions of the draft I had sent to the president the night before instructed him to approach the podium, pull the timer from his pocket, set it to five minutes and greet the audience. That was sure to start the room laughing while also setting up a better joke to come: Once the timer expired, he was to add as many minutes as he wanted, as often as he wanted. It was a simple idea made funnier by juxtaposing a kitschy kitchen device with a presidential podium brimming with gravitas. But Bill Clinton's first full sentence to me that evening torpedoed the speech's very premise: "You can put that egg timer away," he said, glaring at the device I clasped in my hand.

"No egg timer?" I asked. I hoped he was joking.

"The egg timer's a joke on my State of the Union, right?" He seemed only about 83 percent sure.

"Yes it is," I said, ignoring for the moment what else it could possibly refer to.

"Well, forget it," he said. "They've been on me for four days straight about that speech."

"That's exactly why you should do it!" I blurted, in an assertive tone of voice that even surprised me a little.

As I saw it, this joke traded away nothing (conceding the obvious) for something (approving laughter and applause). Yet he saw it differently. The reason he was not inclined to engage in charming, self-effacing humor on this subject was that he was simply not willing to concede the point.

"Eighty three percent of the American people thought I gave a helluva speech," he insisted. "Only here inside the bubble did the reporters have trouble sitting still for more than twenty-five minutes."

The speech he went on to give later that night substituted for gentle, self-directed humor a hostile drive-by diatribe aimed at his critics. The room generously offered feigned laughter whenever it sensed that something he said was intended as a joke. Otherwise, the response was a collective, incredulous gape. Only when the room's response had been reduced to near silence did Clinton reach for the object behind the In-Case-of-Emergency-Break-Glass sign in his mind. He pulled the egg timer from his pocket and placed it on the podium, eliciting one of the few authentic laughs of the night.

Self-deprecating humor comes naturally to only the most skillful practitioners of public power and your average Jew. At that moment in his presidency, the benefits of self-directed jokes were not yet evident to Bill Clinton. As the designated White House in-house humorist, it was nay job to guide him through Washington's odd humor rituals with my best and funniest suggestions for the things he might say. Somewhere in the course of my career that bridged the world of humor and politics, I had absorbed the first rule of successful presidential mirth-making. From Teddy Roosevelt ("Speak softly and carry a big stick.") to Ronald Reagan ("I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to rake care of itself."), the most popular presidents have used wit to steal the ammunition from their critics as the best way to defend themselves. My personal presidential humor muse has always been John Kennedy, a man with a hyper-ironic and recklessly self-effacing wit. In 1958, then-Senator Kennedy was already leading the pack for the Democratic presidential nomination, but many in Washington still dismissed him as the brash son of a wealthy and unscrupulous man, a father too eager to bankroll his son's upcoming bid for the White House. Speaking at the Capitol Hilton before an audience of such skeptics, Kennedy held up what he said was a telegram from his "generous daddy" and read it aloud: "Jack, Don't spend one dime more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide." With a wink and a smile, John Kennedy had the audacity to tell a joke that, out of the mouth of another, would have been nothing less than devastating. This was my idea of a profile in courage.

Granted, not everyone is as naturally charming as JFK--or was this the work of his master wordsmith Ted Sorenson. (Ask not.) But these lessons are still there to be learned for those who stand upon the bully pulpit.

Bill Clinton is as smart as any person who's held the office, perfectly capable of generating witticism and winning over a crowd. But when being tortured endlessly by Beltway critics, even he needed a little help. Clinton had become accustomed to using humor as...