The XX Factor: What women really think.

American Exceptionalism

Step back and think about it, Dahlia, Melinda, Emily, et al.: Sarah Palin pretending to enjoy a comedy rap at her expense, McCain and Obama howling with laughter at jokes about Joe the Plumber and Obama's middle name—isn't this whole phenomenon rather odd? What other country demands that its political leaders have not only policy prescriptions, rhetorical skill, good looks, and televisual charm but a well-honed sense of humor as well? In many cultures—including those of central Europe, whence I'm writing this—jokes are considered infantile. "Serious" politicians don't make them; national leaders don't laugh much on TV. And they certainly don't do stand-up comedy routines of the sort that both McCain and Obama carried off with such excellent timing at the Alfred E. Smith dinner last week. I made my (Polish) husband watch the video clips of both speeches, and he shook his head in wordless admiration.

It's an American strength, this ability our leaders have—occasionally—to laugh at themselves, to appear on Letterman or at the White House correspondents' dinner: It reflects the fact that politics in the United States isn't, as in many places, a matter of life or death: Whoever loses this election is not going to jail, and his followers will not be persecuted. It also means the political class has some healthy distance from what it does, at least a few nights a year.

Still, in order for this good humor to work, especially at the height of the election campaign, the joking has to be even-handed, the mockery bipartisan. Which the Al Smith dinner was, and the Palin SNL sketches were not. That is, Tina Fey was funny, Amy Poehler was funny, but Palin was not at all funny: She was uncomfortable, because all of the laughter was, in fact, at her expense. Her lame attempt to make fun of Fey's unwatched show was nowhere near as powerful as Fey's imitation of Palin's "pageant walk," and her determination to smile her way through the whole thing was impossible to watch. One almost felt sorry for her.

But yes, I laughed at the dancing moose.