What were the odds? Just as I start doing stand-up for the first time, John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey makes a compelling argument for drawing politicians from the ranks, not of lawyers and CEOs, but stand-up comics:
Let’s say the candidate’s job is to walk into a room of complete strangers and get them to like him. Connect with him. Wow, the few rare politicians who can do that, they’re worth their weight in gold.
I did that for twelve years. So did hundreds of other people you’ve never heard of. We’re stand-ups, and that’s the ENTRY-LEVEL for the job.
A good stand-up can walk into a room, a bar with no stage and a shit mic, in the deep goddam South or Montana or Portland or Austin or Boston, and not only tell jokes with differing political opinions than the crowd, can get them to laugh….
In short — every club audience is a swing state.
I think I speak for a lot of professional comics when I say there’s nothing more frustrating than watching your candidate up on stage or on TV flail around without the basic rhetorical skills needed to score a 5 minute opening set at the Improv. Never mind the more advanced skills of the road comic. But because the vast amount of speaking a candidate does is either a.) to sedate, formal fundraising audiences or b.) rallies filled with the base, the flaws in presentation are hidden. The flaws in the greater theory of candidate communication are never exposed.
Okay — there are some obvious issues. For one thing, every joke a comic has ever made would be strip-mined by opposition researchers and lovingly sculpted into attack ads. (“You might think there’s nothing funny about violence in our streets, but Mr. Laughy Laugherton thinks it’s a riot!“) And for another, TV’s a cool medium and stand-up is hot. (I’m, ah, bluffing. I’ve never read any McLuhan.)
So I’m not saying candidate search committees should start hanging out at amateur nights at Yuk Yuks… but I’m not saying they shouldn’t, either.
