Late-Night Political Jokes and Funny Quotes

Daniel Kurtzman's Late-Night Political Jokes and Funny Quotes

"Today President Bush pardoned the White House turkey. Of course the turkey had to donate $100,000 to his reelection campaign first." —David Letterman

"The White House announced that this year the president is going to pardon two turkeys this Thanksgiving. He didn't issue that many pardons when he was governor of Texas!" —Jay Leno

"Let's say they do use suicide donkeys, now would that be 'weapons of ass destruction'?" —Jay Leno

"Wait, is he quoting Hamlet? I'll tell you, for a guy who once equated gayness with bestiality, he's sure awfully familiar with the theater." —Jon Stewart, on Sen. Rick Santorum's remarking, "Methinks thou dost protest too much" during the 30-hour Senate filibuster

"Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced he will refuse his $175,000 salary and will work for free. I believe he will be worth every penny." —Craig Kilborn

The Boston Globe on the late night appearances by candidates:

"Letterman is the Tim Russert of the talk shows. He's the actual test," one Democratic insider says. "On Leno, you can go on and do your bit. Whereas on Letterman, he isn't afraid to ask you legitimately tough questions. He'll do his part to trip you up."

Letterman has done his best to hone that reputation in this new, semiserious phase of his career. His somber post-Sept. 11 interviews made him a sort of national catharsis machine. And his 2000 interview with Republican nominee George W. Bush -- in which he grilled the candidate on the death penalty and the air quality in Texas -- gave him a measure of infamy in the political world.

The Bush interview was "deadly," the equivalent of a harsh grilling on a Sunday news show, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "It is a very, very effective piece of journalism."

A Leno appearance, by contrast, is seen as a chance for shtick -- a place where John F. Kerry sharpened his man-of-the-people chops by riding a motorcycle onstage on Nov. 11. A Kerry adviser says that the Harley spin was the Leno writers' idea and that the show wanted Kerry on for Veterans Day, all good for his campaign message.

But the visit proved that Leno can be devastating, too. Because Kerry, it turned out, was the second-billed guest, following a cigar-chomping, trash-talking puppet named Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. And the dog, voiced by comedian Robert Smigel, delivered a sharper critique of Kerry than any rival is likely to muster. His humor tends to center on dog waste, and this time he compared it to the Kerry campaign's momentum.

In May, Senator Joe Lieberman, who had just announced his presidential bid, came on the air to read a Top Ten list. There were complex negotiations over the wording, a Lieberman aide said, but the results were suitably goofy: Number one was "Look at me. Do you honestly think there'll be a sex scandal?"

And Clark, the first candidate this year to be a full-fledged Letterman guest, went on after the "Top Ten Perks of Being a Playboy Playmate" (number one: "I bought a house with the money I saved on pants") and the guy who hoped to break a world record by balancing beer glasses on his chin.