Two weeks after Boston, Barack Obama will have to walk a line between heartfelt and funny at this weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. For Clinton speechwriter Mark Katz, that’s an eerily familiar challenge.
Barbara Kinney/The White House
“Hey Mark, do you have a funny speech for me there?”
“Yes I do, sir!” I said enthusiastically. Despite the fact that I was the president’s designated humor speechwriter, I wasn’t quick enough to say anything funnier than that.
“Great, we’ll go over it when the rest of the team gets here.”
He went back into his office and closed the door. A few pleasantries with Betty later, Don Baer, the president’s chief speechriter showed up. The pained look on his face suggested I was not going to like what I was about to hear.
“I’ve got bad news for you, Katz. It’s a no-go on the comedy.”
There was a long look as the words set in. As nicely as he knew how, Don was telling me to beat it. We were only ten days removed from a terrorist’s bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City that claimed 168 people (19 children among them) and six days away from the healing benediction Bill Clinton had delivered at the nationally televised memorial service. I had known from the beginning that the humor speech I was working on was contigent upon a game-time decision about whether enough time had passed to give it. The president’s top politcal advisor at the time, Dick Morris, was still watching the president’s approval rating ascend when he determined it would be unwise for Clinton to abruptly change his tone with, of all things, jokes. And so unfolded the most minor tragedy to come of the Oklahoma City bombing: the president would not deliver a funny speech to the 1995 White House Correspondent’s Dinner. (Instead, the comedy portion of the evening would be the responsibility of then-upstart comedian Conan O’Brien.)
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