Bonfire of the Inanities

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Paul Drinkwater, NBCU Photo Bank / AP Photo Enough with the Leno gaffes and trumped-up AIG outrage. I supported Obama because I thought he was a serious man. So let's hope he can manage the economy better than the Special Olympians of Wall Street and Congress.

I’m back from a week in the Alaska bush following the Iditarod sled-dog race. Faithful followers of this space may be thrilled to hear that I managed to land our Cessna all by myself at the Nome airport—or for that matter, may not give a hoot, but I assure you it was thrilling to me.

I did not see a paper, or hear so much as a susurrus of news during that whole time. And now I am back, with the flu (minus-60 wind chill will do that), to a Sunday cornucopia of media, 90 percent of which seems to be about French Revolution-level outrage about the AIG bonuses. The remaining 10 percent is about our commander-in-chief’s cracking wise about his inept bowling on The Tonight Show.

It is fine to burn a witch every now and then, and I would gladly supply some good, dry kindling myself at the base of these stakes, but let’s get it over with and move on.

This may be a feckless or even ill-advised comment coming from one who makes much of his living poking fun at life’s moving (and stationary) targets, but taking my metaphor from Jay Leno’s signature facial feature, let me lead with my own chin and ask: Are we a serious nation anymore? Are we becoming, finally, silly?

I voted for Barack Obama largely on the basis of his temperament, which I thought superior. He is only 47 years old, but to me seemed older than that: a man of precocious aspect and judgment. In the French wording, un homme sérieux.

Shows like Leno’s have been de rigueur venues for politicians for almost two decades now, so there is no point any longer in wringing one’s hands about that. I remember in the ’90s watching Vice President Al Gore go on the Letterman show with a top 10 list of why it’s fun to be vice president. Reason No. 1—drum roll, please—was: “Secret Service code name: Buttafuoco.” (I’ll let you Google Buttafuoco; it’s too depressing to explain.) I laughed at the time, but I remember thinking, “OK, but let’s not hear any more from you about ‘Respect for the office.’” Indeed, by the end of the Clinton administration, that phrase was pretty much dead on arrival.

But Obama’s appearance is the first time a sitting president has made the late-night show rounds. His comment about being a Special Olympian bowler was just one of those things, and he duly, and ritually, apologized. If any deeper good comes of the gaffe, it would be a cessation of such appearances. It seems as good a time as any to ask: Ought a sitting president be cozying up to late-night comedy show hosts?

I know, I know—I feel like a fusty old crank merely posing the question. (Maybe it’s this darned flu.) But it’s hardly as though the president of the United States lacks for venues, and such appearances have a way of trivializing any issue. Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson. Richard Nixon did, famously, go on Laugh In in 1968, but as a candidate; and to his credit, he rued the day and hated every second of it.

Which brings me—achoo—to the other matter: the AIG bonus business. Yes, it’s appalling that “retention payments” (why we can’t call things what they are?) should have been paid out. But it is also appalling that the US Congress, in a fine foam of pique, should attempt to solve the problem by passing, willy-nilly, a confiscatory tax bill that aims to reduce such payments to a net of 10 percent. I am no homme sérieux when it comes to financial policy, but I know the maxim that “bad cases make bad law.”

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