When Laura Bush wisecracked at the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner on Saturday night that she was a “desperate housewife” married to a president who was always sound asleep by 9 p.m., the popular first lady accomplished two things. She brought down a very tough house, and she humanized her husband, whose sagging poll numbers are no match for her own. …Whether her cheeky one-liners will shore up her husband as he struggles with Social Security, gas prices and combative Democrats is another question entirely. But her zingers showed how much the White House relies on her to soften her husband’s rough edges at critical moments, much as she did with her extensive travels and fund-raising in the 2004 campaign. Um, those jokes may “humanize” Bush for the press, but they are of no larger consequence. When The Note suggests that your analysis is inane conventional wisdom, you’re in trouble: It’s a safe bet to say that, as boffo as First Lady Laura Bush was with her stand up routine at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Dinner, the Gang of 500 won’t be able to come up with anything to explain its cosmic political implications better than that it will “soften and humanize” the President.
(That is silly analysis on so many levels, we won’t even attempt to demolish it.)