“I could be a politician like that,” said Stephen Colbert with a snap of his fingers. “But a politician could never do by job.”
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The Colbert Report
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(Video embedded from the Wall Street Journal)
Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, had just lampooned US president Barack Obama on policies from immigration to the environment, offering his own alternatives. Cue Obama, who walked onstage to declare: “You’ve been taking a lot of shots at my job. I’ve decided I’m going to go ahead and take a shot at yours. I want you to get out of the way.”
Obama went on to do a surprisingly good job delivering a three-minute monologue usually called The Word, which Obama renamed the Decree so that it would be more presidential. The evening’s subject? “To Health in a Handbasket.” Obama speaks about himself in the third person, delivering a few light-hearted jabs to his own administration (“Remember the original Healthcare.gov website? I think that’s where Disney got the idea for Frozen“).
Obama has tried his hand at the deadpan comedy thing before, also to promote his Affordable Care Act to young people. The point of this appearance, as he references in a meta bit about how young people only watch comedy news, not real news, was to appeal to America’s young and healthy demographic who are integral to the success of universal health care, but can be reluctant or apathetic about enrolling.
He also took the time to remind America that even though Republicans have a majority in both the House and the Senate, if Congress tries to repeal Obamacare the president still has veto power. “And if I know that guy he is willing to use it.”