Forget the punditry about Sen. John McCain’s demise, like the tactical errors in bashing the Christian right or in his taking money from, and rebuking, the ever-evil “special interests.”
Now the story can be told: He had too little input from Jay Leno.
I say too little because it is clear that he had some.
“Leno likes him, and when they first met in the [“Tonight Show”] green room, they bonded,” said Mike Murphy, a top strategist for a roller coaster campaign now in a state of “suspension.”
Murphy, like McCain, was on a decided work suspension last week, in his case vacationing on a posh island near Miami when I tracked him down. The fact of a helping Leno hand had first been mentioned in passing in a Washington Post piece on Murphy several days earlier.
It was all a lovely coincidence because I had previously chatted with Leno about the nexus of politics and comedy, seeking counsel from a fellow who takes his comedy seriously:
Gov. George W. Bush failed to give a reprieve to that 62-year-old Texan who was put to death last night by lethal injection. I don’t think she did herself any favors. Did you hear what her last words to Bush were? “I’m voting for McCain.” — Leno
So Leno met McCain and liked him. And when McCain started being targeted as someone with an awful temper, Leno felt compelled to contribute a line McCain might use, according to Murphy. It was to the effect that, “People say I’m crazy but, hey, I work in Congress!”
The first time Leno had an idea, the suggestion was given to a McCain aide in California, who had worked for former Gov. Pete Wilson. Then, Murphy said, several calls, from a Leno producer, came to him.
“We got one later during the Pat Robertson phone scandal,” Murphy said, referring to calls organized by the pillar of the Christian right on behalf of Bush. They pounded McCain in what some thought was a decidedly heavy-handed way.
This time, the Leno suggestion was a line to the effect, “Boy, my phone has been ringing off the hook lately–500,000 wrong numbers from Pat Robertson.”
Although McCain had a few funny lines in his stock campaign speech, none was Leno-generated. As for inclusion of any Leno lines, Murphy says none became a fixture and, in fact, one or two were only used once or twice, notably the Robertson phone call riff.
Leno’s own politics are unclear from his work, and he generally seems to be an equal opportunity abuser of the famous and pompous, including Democratic and Republican politicians.
What’s happened to Bill Bradley? This guy has dropped off the radar screen. He’s so desperate he is thinking of marrying Rick Rockwell. That’s the only way he can get publicity.
But his counsel to McCain (he is said to have done likewise occasionally for other politicians, notably President Clinton) and the monologues of both Leno and David Letterman raise the question of what impact, if any, political humor can have.
Of course, there is an argument that the late-night talk shows, in particular, have a huge audience and, inevitably, resonance among the body politic. People are a whole lot more likely to chat about a Letterman “Top 10” list over the office water cooler than they are something mentioned by Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings or Dan Rather.
Poor Al Gore. We pick on him, but we like him. Al Gore is very nice. He’s a good guy. But he keeps getting in trouble for taking credit for things he had nothing to do with. Remember first he said he was the inspiration for the book “Love Story.” Remember that? That wasn’t true. Then he said he invented the Internet. Remember that? That was false. Then just last week he claimed to have exposed the Love Canal scandal. That was false too. You know what’s ironic? The only thing he’ll really be able to take credit for–getting George W. Bush elected.
Murphy, the consultant, thinks that, if over time, Leno and Letterman keep “pounding you and they all reflect one thing,” they can reinforce a particular image. For instance, the image of former Vice President Dan Quayle being stupid.
“Especially in a general [presidential] election, you pay attention if you become a caricature,” said Murphy. “Like Gore is stiff, a robot. Bush was a mudslinger at first, now a preppie lightweight. You might get worried. You don’t want to end up in Quayleville.”
As for Leno himself, he demurs slightly from the tag of doing political comedy. But it’s clear he has thought a lot about the matter.
“It’s less political than being topical,” he said. So many daily shows, especially the morning and afternoon syndicated ones, “try to do evergreen shows, generic ones, so they can be rerun. With late-night television, people like to watch the news and see you do a funny take on it. So if there’s something other than politics in the news, that’s what you talk about.”
“I don’t consider what any of the late-night people do as political humor, but mostly just jokes,” said Leno.
Anybody see “60 Minutes” last night? Al Gore was on. More like “120 Minutes!”
“What you tend to do,” said Leno, “is find a real simplistic thing. Quayle the dumb guy, Dole the old guy, Forbes the dorky guy.”
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As for any bona fide ramifications, the comedian says that he doesn’t sense any impact. “You don’t change anybody’s mind with comedy. You reinforce what they believe. You then have to wait for society to change.”
A bit unclear with that, I asked him to explain and he continued, “Take the name Bruce. Back in the 1970s or early 1980s, somebody doing an effeminate character always called him Bruce. Then came Bruce Springsteen, and that went away.”
“Then there were the stupid, Polish jokes,” Leno said. “[Lech] Walesa came and those went away.” A comedian doesn’t really change views, he maintained, but instead “goes with the flow.”
Bush also said he would work to reduce the marriage penalty. That’s something Clinton wanted to do. What is the penalty? The guy cheats on his wife, has a 23-year-old girlfriend, he smokes cigars, he plays golf, his wife forgives him. What’s the penalty?
As for Clinton, “he is the greatest” fodder for a comedian these days, said the man who knows.
“When [Ronald] Reagan left, we thought we were dead. But Clinton is a mother lode. What is better than youth, money, power and sex? All the elements of the things people are interested in. Who doesn’t know somebody who is fooling around with somebody else?”
He then asked me, “Did you ever think you would see the day when people were joking about oral sex on television?”
No, I didn’t.
Leno expressed admiration for one of my favorite political comics, Mort Sahl, who remains very much an essayist. But Leno knows that today’s audiences have a tough time with old-liners like Sahl, who may spend several minutes setting up a punch line. Audiences may not have the patience, in part due to a television culture in which they are accustomed to increasingly brief sound bites.
He recalls watching the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite when the late Eric Severeid did commentaries. “The Severeid commentary would explain the news. Now when I go out on the street and mention Ken Starr, people say, `The Starbucks guy? The guy who takes his trash out every day?”‘ references to all those images of Starr exiting his home, coffee in hand during the height of impeachment frenzy.
His point was that the audience’s understanding of current affairs can be razor thin, based largely on quick video images. It is why he makes sure, during a monologue, to carefully explain the identity of everybody he mentions. Don’t assume that people know the name “Madeleine Albright” without reminding then that she’s the secretary of state.
A while back Leno did a joke about Bush, to the effect that he has proposed 100,000 new teachers and those are just for himself.
McCain should have used it.