I didn’t watch the White House Correspondents Dinner. I’m not 100 percent in the camp of our friend Mark Steyn — I don’t think that a little tame and self-indulgent self-mockery by the Beltway establishment is that loathsome, especially compared with most of the other awful things the D.C. crowd does — but I do think that there are about, say, 19 billion other activities that are a more pleasant way to spend a Saturday night. I did, however, read the AP story about it, and this part jumped out at me:
The president pointed out his similarities with the presumed Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.
“We both think of our wives as our better halves, and the American people agree to an insulting extent,” the president said.
“We both have degrees from Harvard. I have one, he has two. What a snob.”
The crack drew a thumbs up from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who was in the audience. Santorum dropped out of the presidential primary campaign earlier this month. He had called Obama a snob for encouraging young Americans to attend college.
Now, Obama’s joke was partly a dig at Romney, but it was a greater dig at Santorum. And Santorum handled it exactly the right way: He owned it, and moved on. It’s a demonstration of the basic character that catapulted him from no money and zero in the polls to a real shot at the nomination: a scrappy guy who can roll with the punches.