Never make people laugh. If you would succeed in life, you must be solemn —solemn as an ass. All the great monuments are built over solemn asses.
In the century since an Ohio Senator offered that advice to future President James Garfield, few have taken it more seriously than the present aspirants to the White House. Whether at the debates or on the stump, both Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford appear to be auditioning for Mount Rushmore. Their few attempts at humor have been elephantine or asinine, a condition that may make nearly half the electorate boycott the polling booths next month.
For the many columnists, cartoonists and comedians who provide the lunatic fringework of political commentary, this year's presidential race has not been a laughing matter. "The banality of the candidates destroys humorous comment," complains Roger Angell, humorist and a fiction editor of The New Yorker. To Johnny Carson, Carter v. Ford is "fear of the unknown v. fear of the known." Chirped veteran Mockingbird Mort Sahl: "Choosing between them is like choosing between Seconal and Nembutal."
Independent Candidate Eugene McCarthy—who says that if Common Cause and the New York Times had been around in 1776, "Thomas Jefferson would have had to change the Declaration of Independence to read, 'We pledge our lives, our sacred honor, and up to $1,000' "—finds the current state of campaign humor "dreadful." Columnist Robert Yoakum polled nearly three dozen White House correspondents for their opinion of Administration humor. Not one rated the Ford funny bone favorably, and Washington Post Reporter Lou Cannon placed it "slightly ahead of the Federal Register and somewhat behind the Congressional Record."
Grandchild Gap. Russell Baker of the New York Times, one of the most literate of campaign jesters, finds that he has been devoting much of his election-year commentary to what he calls "common middle-class living experiences," like tennis, money, the strength of paper towels and the growing shortage of grandchildren ("Our kids aren't having kids any more"). These domestic dissertations, he reports, draw vastly more reader mail than his essays on politics.
Indeed, in his 1976 extracurricular activities, Baker has abandoned politics to write a two-act musical with Composer Cy (Sweet Charity) Coleman about the American family. Baker claims his political ennui is so acute that he pines for ancient villainies. "I miss Nixon," he confesses. "I'd like to get him back. It's possible, you know. He could run for another term." *
Other humorists are less nostalgic —and more bountiful. They have found small seams of giddy gold in Carter's racy Playboy interview, Earl Butz's scurrilous remark, Ford's East European gaffe. If such breakthroughs continue, the contest might yet get something risible visible. "Voter apathy may be peaking too early," deadpans Columnist Bill Vaughan of the Kansas City Star. Adds Boston Globe Cartoonist Paul Szep: "I had to scrounge around for topics, but then in the last few weeks the goofs have been so numerous that my cartoons now come naturally." Among them: a Soviet soldier asking a comrade if he has heard "the latest Polish-Rumanian-Yugoslav joke."