By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Bush poked fun at perceptions that he is a little short of intelligence and that his vice president is in control as he made his first appearance in the Gridiron Club's 116th annual spoof Saturday night.
"These stories about my intellectual capacity do get under my skin a little bit," Bush told the white-tie gathering.
He said it appeared to him that even his staff doubted his brain power because every day he got an "intelligence briefing." And he said he was heeding some advice he got from longtime Democratic power Robert Strauss: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the people you need to concentrate on."
The president said there was much people didn't know about him, such as his interest in the human genome.
"I hope it eventually clones another Dick Cheney. Then, I won't have to do anything," he joked of his vice president's reported heavy influence in the administration.
He dismissed suggestions that Cheney is the decision-maker in the White House. "To those people, I say. ..." At that point, he paused, turned to Cheney and said, "Dick, what do I say?"
Bush admitted he had "foot-and-mouth disease" when it comes to the English language, saying he has been told that his lips "are where words go to die."
The bulk of the show was a spoofing of the politicians whose reach for power last year sputtered or thrived over disputed ballots full of hanging or dimpled chads.
The menu of jokes was covering the result of the long count in Florida, the election-deciding Supreme Court, the Bush family's "Tex-Mex" blue blood, Bill and Hillary Clintons' new furniture, and last-minute pardons.
The skit-and-pun review could have been entitled "the revenge of the dimpled chad," or "the lament of the perforated politician."
Every president since Benjamin Harrison has been a Gridiron guest before an audience that includes journalists, Cabinet members, senators, governors, generals and ambassadors.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, responded for his party. He followed an introduction in song as a righteous golden-winged and heavily haloed angel promoting "me-me-me-me-me."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, fresh from a bruising Senate confirmation battle, took up the comic slack for the Republicans after a Gridiron singer portrayed him as owing his Cabinet post to "the right wing never failing."
Washington's streets were lit with gas when 15 of the journalists of 1885 founded a club, named it for a kitchen griddle, and invited every officeholder in sight for an evening of mostly good-natured ribbing.
The latest production continued the tradition.
While a wretched figure in convict stripes knelt at his feet, former President Clinton's stand-in sang, "Even though you are a fugitive, I will pardon you." From the chorus: "He has proved that sin's in vogue, that's his legacy."
Former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was shown leaving the White House, singing, "We just took what's owed to us and grabbed ourselves a fistful, sofas, tables, ottomans, bric-a-brac and crystal."
The Ralph Nader character was portrayed as a green, Green Party frog croaking about the abuse he has received, "just because these idiots think I'm the guy who took Florida from Al Gore."
The Al Gore character: "I thought I had won, the polls and anchors all told me so; But those GOP judges told me it was time to go."
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and his postelection interest in the GOP tax cut: "He's a pip, he's knowing. He sees how the wind is blowing."
Interior Secretary Gale Norton's stand-in sang: "The tundra's alive, with the sound of drilling; let Democrats dry their caribou tears"
The heat was turned up a notch for Louisiana Sen. John Breaux and other "turncoat Democrats." As in, "John Breaux's for sale or rent, to our new president."
A chorus in gray suits, gray shirts, gray ties, gray socks, gray shoes, gray hair and gray faces saluted Gov. Gray Davis of California. The point: Rolling power blackouts have turned his presidential sky from blue to gray.
By Gridiron tradition, sitting presidents are not portrayed directly on stage. But the Bush family "full of blue blood genes" and "Tex-Mex beans" was being shown as lining up a nearly endless cast of future presidents.
And the Gridiron chorus, serenading "this fellow who's from Texas with an initial for a name," sang: "He didn't win the most votes, but he's president just the same."
