Bush may have the last laugh

WASHINGTON: Moments after Jay Leno ripped President Bush in his monologue one night, the ‘Tonight Show’ host interviewed ‘the president’, ‘via satellite’ from ‘Kyoto, Japan’.

A grinning president, looking not quite himself, appeared, greeting Leno in botched Japanese. Leno asked what he thinks of the Kyoto Accord.

“Kyoto Accord, Kias, Hondas — Jay, all those little foreign cars, same thing,” said the commander-in-chief, his shoulders doing a bumpkin-like bounce as he heh-heh-hehs.

Leno asked the purpose for the trip.

Bush: “We want to bring democracy to Japan.”

Leno: “Mr President, Japan is a democracy!”

Bush smiled wide, looked directly into the camera and with an exaggerated thumbs-up gesture replied, ‘Mission accomplished!’

Big audience laugh.

To look the part for his brief ‘Tonight Show’ appearances, 42-year-old impersonator Steve Bridges undergoes 2-1/2 hours of prosthetic makeup. He’s been refining his Bush impression for more than four years.

“I try to become that person in a funny way,” says Bridges.

Bush has that one quality that every president of the modern media has possessed: He is easy to mimic. But why do we do him? What is it about a crisis-brewing, low approval-rated second term that brings out even more of the presidential impersonator in everyone?

“The court jester really existed, and he was the only person who could be critical without being hung. That same role exists today,” says Stephen Rosenfield, director of the American Comedy Institute in New York.

This season’s first episode of ‘Saturday Night Live’ found comedian Will Forte again carrying on the show’s 30-year tradition of aping the leader of the free world. Forte did a news-conference sketch of a flustered, whiny president taking questions on the chin in the Katrina aftermath.

Forte says impersonation isn’t exactly his, uh, forte.

“I don’t have the impersonation chops,” he says. “I try to go for the overall feeling instead,” he says.

So does radio host Mike O’Meara. Describing key characteristics of ‘doing Bush’, O’Meara sounds like the president’s shrink. “There is the overconfident George Bush, which is one of my favourites, like the day he introduced ‘the architect of the campaign’, Karl Rove,” says O’Meara, who has been doing presidential impressions since he was 5, when he heard Vaughn Meader’s impression of John F. Kennedy.

Jim Morris, a Dallas comedian who plies his trade as Bush at corporate events and on late-night TV shows and comedy specials, slips into his George W. as easily as others might put on a costume: “People ask me bout ‘Raq. We have to be in ‘Raq because we value human life. Unlike the people who oppose us, who deserve to die.”

At most of his appearances, ‘The Tonight Show’s’ Bridges is usually introduced as ‘a very special guest’ and enters to ‘Hail to the Chief’.

“I come out, wave, look around, stand at the podium and say, ‘First, I want to thank you for having me. And third, I apologize for forgetting my second point,’ “ says Bridges.

“Some actually do think, ‘It’s George Bush!’ Some of them stand, some of them, their jaws are down and they’re clapping. It’s a fun gig.”

But it always ends.

“If you’re a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, you’re going to have a job as long as you can look like the young Marilyn Monroe. But the thing about political look-alikes, they have a limited lifespan,” says Chad Freidrichs, whose 112-minute documentary First Impersonator, scheduled for release next year, combines the story of Meader — whose JFK comedy career ended on November 22, 1963 — with that of today’s impersonators.

“There’s the deadline, and they’re kind of rooting for their candidate to win because their job is at stake,” says Freidrichs. “Their performance is limited to about eight years.”

Morris, who can earn as much as $10,000 for a corporate-party appearance, says he suffers panic attacks every presidential campaign. “Oh-eight should be very interesting, especially if Hillary is in the mix,” he says.

Forte deadpans, “I’m already working on my Hillary Clinton.”

—Dawn/The Washington Post News Service