Something unusual happened over the weekend: Saturday Night Live mocked Donald Trump, and the president didn't take to Twitter to insist that Alec Baldwin's impersonation of him is weak and unfunny and the entire show is failing. Whether this break from his usual pattern was an act of uncharacteristic restraint or a result of Reince Priebus hiding his smartphone, we may never know. But is it possible that when Trump tweets that the skits about him aren't funny, he might have a point?
Many of the comedians who talk about politics have joked that Donald Trump is comedy gold, which certainly seems obvious on its face. After all, we're talking about a buffoonish ignoramus, a man of world-historical insecurity, someone who tells absurdly obvious lies on a daily basis. What's not to laugh at? (Well, the disastrous consequences to America and the world. But besides that.)
I have to confess that I find Baldwin's Trump impersonation somewhat lacking. Part of it is the uneven quality of the writing (Steve Bannon in a Skeletor outfit? That's the best you could come up with?), but part of it is that Baldwin may do a passable Trump impression, but he's missing the key that would elevate the impersonation and make it simultaneously biting and funny. Let's look at this weekend's version:
One problem with this portrayal is that it takes the easiest way out: Trump is a dolt, manipulated by others. It isn't hard to write jokes that riff on that idea, but it doesn't wrestle with either the possibility that he knows what he's doing or with the more sinister aspects of his personality and what he intends to do.
Now let's compare that to some earlier, more successful presidential impersonations Saturday Night Live managed. Will Ferrell's George W. Bush was the defining comedic interpretation of Bush not because Ferrell's mimicry was perfect (it was perfectly fine, but it could have been better) but because he found a complexity to the portrayal. Where others played Bush as simply a dolt, Ferrell portrayed him as a guy who knew that he wasn't smart, and also knew he had to pretend to be smart-and thought he was absolutely killing it. It was that combination of dumbness and confidence that gave the impersonation its edge:
Similarly, in the previous administration Darrell Hammond portrayed Bill Clinton not just as a charming con man, but as a charming con man who wrapped you around his finger not just to accomplish some goal but for the sheer joy of it. It was Clinton's glee that made it work, beyond Hammond's pitch-perfect vocal intonations and facial expressions:
In both cases, the power of the satire came because they found an emotional depth that other impressions lacked. Which raises a challenge for anyone trying to imitate Donald Trump: Is there any emotional depth there to find?
There's another problem with Trump impersonations, which is that a good satire of a political figure takes the things about them that are mockable and exaggerates (or subverts) them, which requires something mockable in the first place. Many presidents have an obvious personality quirk that lends itself to that kind of exaggeration-Bush's lack of intellectual heft, Clinton's always-on-the-make smarminess, George H.W. Bush's patrician awkwardness, Ronald Reagan's genial bumbling. Barack Obama's particular brand of cool-controlled, careful, cautious-meant that his personality didn't offer much to exaggerate. That's why the only impersonation of him that stuck was the one Key & Peele devised, which involved the creation of an entirely separate character, Luther the Obama anger translator, who would say all the things Obama wouldn't allow himself to say:
It may be difficult to craft a truly effective caricature of Donald Trump because he's already such a walking caricature that you can't exaggerate any of his character flaws for effect. You could write a comedy bit in which he says "I have a very good brain," pretends to have a brilliant plan to defeat ISIS but refuses to share it because then the terrorists would find out, and endlessly insists that his inaugural had the biggest crowd ever, but it wouldn't be all that biting because he actually did those things.
Not that this is a bad time for political comedy. But some of the most successful presentations are the ones that don't try to pretend it's just about the jokes. Samantha Bee's weekly show works because she mixes humor with unapologetic anger. Seth Meyers has found his voice with "A Closer Look," segments on one topic lasting up to 10 minutes (an eternity on a late-night show), resembling what John Oliver does on his HBO show.
Whenever we watch one of these, our feelings about the president inevitably color what we think of the comedy. If you're a liberal you get some measure of satisfaction from someone sticking it to Trump, even if the shots don't quite land. But we shouldn't imagine that more stinging comedy would have a profound effect on Trump's political fortunes. It seldom works that way-but at least in his case, we know it drives him crazy.