Whether it was worth the wait is beside the point: In the third year of his term, President Obama on Saturday finally attended the annual dinner-and-spoofs gala of the 126-year-old Gridiron Club, made up of Washington’s journalistic elite, and won the night with his roast of Republicans, Democrats, the media and – what was most appreciated — himself.
Stepping to the podium to the usual strains of “Hail to the Chief,” Mr.Obama asked, “Can we go with the song that we talked about?” Out blared Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”
“Some things just bear repeating,” said the president not born in Kenya.
Befitting the traditional spirit of the event, Mr. Obama then was off on a bit of self-deprecation oft-punctuated by laughter – about his reputation for cool and conceit, for prickly press relations, for failing to lead, for clinging to teleprompters. Like his predecessors back to William McKinley in the 19th century, the president in so doing took advantage of the opportunity such Washington affairs offer to try to re-set the presidential image, and show a little self behind the satire, before an audience of the nation’s leading opinion-shapers.
Mr. Obama recalled his previous appearance at the Gridiron dinner in 2006, when he was a first-term senator. “A lot has changed in those past five years,” he said. “Back then I was a newcomer who
couldn’t get anything done in the Senate. Now I’m a president who can’t get anything done in the Senate.”
Testy relations with the media? “Come on, I love the press,” Mr. Obama insisted. “I even sat for an interview with Bill O’Reilly” – the
conservative Fox pundit – “right before the Super Bowl. That was a change of pace — I don’t often get a chance to be in a room with an ego that’s bigger than mine.”
He generally tunes out his critics, Mr. Obama said, before naming a list of liberal and often-critical Web sites that “most days I barely skim.”
The Club’s journalist members, in their send-ups preceding the president’s stand-up routine, also had parodied his strained relations with liberals in his party. In one, John E. Mulligan of the Providence Journal impersonated liberal Democratic leader Howard Dean and sang like Bob Dylan a liberals’ lament to the tune of “Just Like a Woman.” The refrain: “He looks just like a lib’ral. Yes, he does, and he writes books just like a lib’ral. Yes, and his knee jerks just like a lib’ral. But he works with…the Republicans!”
Mr. Obama mock-confessed, “Alright, I hear criticisms. I do. For example, I know that people think I’m not passionate enough, that I’m too cool, that I’m too detached. But as I was going through my daily routine, sitting alone in my study (laughter here), meditating, thinking about how to ‘win the future’ (more laughter) I pondered this critique and calmly rejected it as thoroughly illogical (laughter and applause).”
On Saturday Mr. Obama had golfed so long that he had left himself just over an hour to return to the White House and change into the required white-tie tuxedo. But he dismissed criticisms that he is “spending” too much time on the links. “I’m ‘investing’ time on the golf course,” he said — ribbing the rhetoric of his “Win the Future” campaign for more money for education, infrastructure and research programs.
The president thanked the Gridiron Club for shortening the show’s usual, much-criticized length. “I really couldn’t stay here much longer,” he said. “I have to get back to not being involved in the budget negotiations. My schedule is just packed with meetings that I’m not attending.”
The president did not spare others, including House Speaker John A. Boehner, the Republican from Ohio who quickly has become known for his weepy shows of emotion as well as his perma-tan.
“I used to think that it was a tan,” Mr. Obama said, “but after seeing how often he tears up I’ve come to realize that’s not a tan — that’s rust!”
As the journalists had done in their elaborately costumed skits, Mr. Obama took aim at several Republicans on the long list of potential challengers to his re-election in 2012 – including Indiana’s Governor Mitch Daniels, who was the night’s Republican roaster, paired with Democratic speaker Kathleen Sebelius, Mr. Obama’s secretary of health and human services.
“Before he was governor, Mitch was a pharmaceutical executive and he was George W. Bush’s budget director. I don’t have a joke here,” Mr. Obama dead-panned. “I just want to point it out. To all the journalists. In case you didn’t know.”
He thanked Haley Barbour, the rotund governor of Mississippi, for helping Michelle Obama, who did not attend, on her “Let’s Move” campaign against obesity. But, he added, “When Michelle said you need to run, she didn’t mean for president.”
Ribbing himself and Tim Pawlenty, the little-known governor of Minnesota, who chose campaigning over attending the dinner, Mr. Obama said, “I think the American people are going to have some tough questions for Tim — specifically, who are you? And where did you come from? Which is okay — two years into my presidency and I’m still getting those questions.”
Mr. Obama in effect sought to kill with kindness “my dear, dear friend, Jon Huntsman,” who, to the consternation of the White House, decided to quit as ambassador to China to explore a run for the Republican presidential nomination – an effort in which warm words from Mr. Obama will hardly help.
So Mr. Obama obliged: “As his good friends in China might say, he is truly the yin to my yang. And I’m going to make sure that every primary voter knows it.”
Mr. Daniels, in his own speech blending self-deprecation (about his shortness and lack of charisma) and send-ups, teased the president by recalling Mr. Obama’s controversial remarks, at a private fundraiser during the 2008 campaign, about conservative voters’ emphasis on religion and gun rights. Pointing to the sling binding his right arm since recent surgery, Mr. Daniels said, “Mr. President, until I get this thing off, I can cling to my gun or my Bible, but not both.”
Mrs. Sebelius teased Mr. Daniels in turn. A former governor of Kansas, she noted that both of them have been governors and cabinet secretaries, “and neither of us is going to be president in 2012.” Mr. Daniels, on the dais, smiled and made a face as if in some relief.
For all the joking, each speaker turned serious. Mr. Obama noted the country’s economic challenges and its troops fighting overseas, the post-earthquake devastation in Japan and the upheaval in the Mideast, which, he said, underscored the importance of press freedoms.