A longtime presidential speechwriter is offering up some advice to President Biden ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner: Stick to the script.
“The most important thing is that he gets up there and is likable. And he doesn’t seem petty,” says Landon Parvin.
The writing guru knows a thing or two about helping commanders in chief get some chuckles out of buttoned-up Washington audiences. A former speechwriter for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Parvin estimates that he’s penned remarks for at least 60 black-tie dinners over his 40-year career, including the Gridiron Club and Radio and Television Correspondents dinners, the Alfalfa Club dinner and the annual WHCA gala.
Facing sinking job approval poll numbers, Biden “could do himself a lot of good,” Parvin says, when he takes to the dais on Saturday at the Washington Hilton for the WHCA event, which was canceled the past two years due to the coronavirus pandemic and which former President Trump skipped attending while he was in office.
“He’s had a rough few months, and it kind of looks like he’s on the ropes. If he did jokes that projected someone who was much more in control, I think that would serve him well,” Parvin says of Biden.
“Self-deprecating jokes are always funnier when the speaker is riding high, which is not the case right now. But to the extent he can make fun of some of the things that people are taking seriously, is in effect, saying, ‘I can joke about this, and there’s no need for you to worry about it.’ And so he kind of rises above it.”
Presidents typically deliver roastlike remarks and one-liners at the correspondents’ dinner, but 73-year-old Parvin — who’s also written for Democrats including late Democratic Party Chairman Bob Strauss and former President Clinton’s adviser Vernon Jordan — warns that Biden should be careful about how deep his humor cuts, avoiding across-the-aisle jokes that might leave Republicans bruised.
“I would not attack Republicans because it’ll make him seem smaller. So no zingers, even though that’s the easiest to write,” says Parvin.
“You can still talk about [House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)] or whatever, but they have to be good-natured,” he adds.
And steering clear of major gaffes and soiree-related snafus is achievable.
“I would say the risk is that his performance won’t be good — that he ad libs,” says Parvin, who is poised to share more of his political humor memories on Wednesday at The Hill and the Bipartisan Policy Center’s “Punchlines and Politics” event, which also features insight from former Rep. Dan Glickman (D-Kansas), author Tevi Troy and former Capitol Steps member Bari Bern.
Asked about the optics of appearing at a swanky dinner amid COVID-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Parvin says there’s precedent for having to adjust the president’s planned routine when crises occur on the world stage.
Just days before the 2007 WHCA dinner, a Virginia Tech student shot 32 people on the campus of the Blacksburg, Va., school.
“We had planned for President Bush to play a game where he would go into the audience and ask members of the audience funny questions, for which they would receive funny prizes,” recalls Parvin, who says staffers had already lined up Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and TV host Larry King to participate.
While Bush still attended the dinner, Parvin says, “We canceled any humor.”
“So, it does happen, and let us hope it doesn’t happen this week,” he says.
Parvin also says some of 79-year-old Biden’s characteristics that could be considered political liabilities might actually serve as strengths in a successful correspondents’ dinner speech.
“I would probably do some something that relates to his age, in terms of talking about the good ol’ days or, you know, what it was like to work with Woodrow Wilson, that kind of thing. Or maybe the age thing is explaining Twitter or Tinder or something that recognizes that he is not necessarily like everybody in that audience, that he’s from a different era,” suggests Parvin.
“I usually tell my clients, whether Republican or Democrat, if you’re a Democrat, you’re going to make your better laughs if you make fun of Democrats, and if you’re a Republican, you’re going to get better laughs if you make fun of Republicans,” he says.
“People, whether they recognize it or not, like the feeling of the geniality,” he adds.