Jokes are supposed to be a public speaker’s best friend. They break the ice, put the audience at their ease, and make you look a little more warm and human.
And so they do – when they work.
When they don’t… well, look at Sen. John McCain in last night’s presidential debate.
Discussing health insurance, McCain joked about gold-plated plans that cover hair transplants, suggesting he might need one himself. The joke bombed with the crowd (I expect to see the moment up soon on YouTube with chirping cricket sounds mixed in).
But what was really interesting was the reaction of those Ohio independent voters that CNN had rounded up, who were dial-testing the debate. (Dial-testing allows focus group participants to respond instantly to what they’re hearing, turning the knob up for things they like and down for things they don’t.) McCain’s score plunged, and it took a while to recover.
Why? Maybe partly the delivery – he stepped on any laughter the line might have received. But probably because for most people, health insurance isn’t about hair transplants; it’s about things like cancer screening, broken bones and whether you can afford to get your child the care she or he needs.
His joke trivialized something that is deadly serious to the audience he needed to reach. It widened the gap between speaker and audience – exactly the opposite of what it should have done.
So the lesson for speakers and speechwriters: not all jokes are created equal. And even the funniest hair transplant line McCain could have delivered would likely have been wrong for that moment. A successful joke has to be funny, relevant and appropriate – and you should cut any one-liner that doesn’t meet that test.
(I have a few more tips on jokes and speeches, especially the opening joke, over here. Sen. McCain, for the sake of bipartisanship and my aversion to cringing, you’re welcome to crib.)
McCain’s “joke” was a dig at Joe Biden’s hair plugs. This is what McCain and Palin, and Limbaugh and Hannity, do – they insult their opponents with sarcastic, smart-ass “jokes” that cause their base to chuckle while turning everyone else off. Like when McCain quipped about “nice to see you at a Town Hall” – that was a dig because he claims Obama wouldn’t have town halls with him. Or in the first debate when McCain said “I don’t even have a [presidential] seal yet” – that was a dig at Obama because they claim his campaign logo looked too much like a Presidential Sea. These “jokes” are dog whistles for their base, but they really demonstrate the contempt they have for their opponents – and the majority of Americans.
In the third debate he referred to “gold-plated Cadillac insurance policies that have to do with cosmetic surgery and transplants and all of those kinds of things.” Apparently now he thinks all transplants, including hearts, livers, kidneys, bone marrow, and corneas, are a joke.
I am offended by the remark about transplants regardless of the type of transplant. It is NOT the responsibility of the President of the US to dictate what health plans cover or don’t. He is way off base.