Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

President Barack Obama walks with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, right, as they leave the Gridiron Dinner through a loading area at a hotel in Washington, on March 9, 2013.

President Barack Obama, wearing white tie and tails at Washington’s premiere show of political satire, made light of budget cuts consuming the capital.

“Because of sequester, they cut my tails,” Obama said at the head table of the Gridiron Club’s annual dinner last night, opening with an allusion to the budget sequestration he has ordered. “My joke writers have been placed on furlough.”

This didn’t stop the president from making fun of his new Treasury secretary, Jacob Lew, who replaced Timothy Geithner.

“Jack is so low-key, he makes Tim Geithner look like Tom Cruise,” the president said.

It didn’t stop him from making fun of Secretary of State John Kerry, who has replaced Hillary Clinton.

“Let’s face it, Hillary is a tough act to follow,” Obama said, adding of Kerry: “Frankly, though, I think it’s time for him to stop showing up for work in pant suits.”

And it certainly left no protection for Vice President Joe Biden in Obama’s comedic script for a room full of journalists and government leaders attending the annual Washington ritual.

“His age is an issue,” Obama said of Biden, a potential candidate for higher office. “I had to take Joe aside and say, `Joe, let’s face it, you are way too young to be the Pope.”’

Yet, judging from the laughter in the Renaissance Hotel ballroom, the night belonged to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican who was widely ridiculed for a lackluster televised response to Obama’s first State of the Union address to Congress and the nation as president in 2009.

Jindal thanked the Gridiron Club for offering him this opportunity “to try to be funny on purpose.”

“They say this is a place where you can come and tell jokes about the president, poke fun at yourself, set political ambition aside and just generally say anything you want,” Jindal, a supporter of Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign for president, said in his stand-up routine — “kind of like the Romney campaign.”

“Now some people have asked me if I intend to run for president in 2016,” said Jindal, who went on to name the first of the presidential nominating contests. “I have no plans to run. I’ve made that clear over and over again,” he said — “in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.”

“I mean, come on, what chance does a skinny guy with a dark complexion and a funny name have?” asked Jindal, who was born of Indian immigrants and stood two seats from Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, as he delivered his monologue. “The truth is, I am too skinny to run. At least that’s what my friend, Chris Christie, keeps telling me,” Jindal said of the heavyset New Jersey governor.

“Speaking of brown, I was hoping to see my good friend, John Boehner, here tonight,” Jindal said of the U.S. House speaker from Ohio. “We actually go to the same tanning salon.”

Jindal paused to take a sip of water, explaining he was “getting really dry up here” — with a sight gag making fun of a pause for water that Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida took in this year’s response to the State of the Union.

Jindal even poked fun at the name of the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus: “At least I had the foresight at the age of four to change my name to Bobby.”

Obama, too, had some fun at Rubio’s expense, pausing only briefly for a water break and announcing; “That, Marco Rubio, is how you take a sip of water.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, delivering the Democratic Party’s jokes, offered the audience an allusion to the inaugural ceremony for Obama’s second term in which the singer Beyonce mouthed the words to the national anthem.

“Did anyone else notice that Bobby Jindal lip-synched his entire remarks?” Klobuchar asked.

Klobuchar also joked about Obama’s first debate with Romney during the 2012 campaign, in which polls found viewers crediting Romney with an advantage over the president.

“I know one thing,” Klobuchar said. “I prepared more for this speech than the president did for his first debate.”

The Gridiron Club, marking its 128th year, is the oldest organization of journalists in Washington, with membership by in invitation. The private conclave roasts public officials at an annual white-tie dinner in Washington, with the songs of its satirical skits accompanied by U.S. Marine Band.

While every American president since 1885 except Grover Cleveland has attended the Gridiron, this was only the second appearance for Obama as president. He last appeared in 2011.

The night featured repeated jokes about journalist Bob Woodward’s telephone and e-mail encounter with an Obama aide who suggested Woodward would regret what he was reporting about the president. Woodward, of the Washington Post, was one of the reporters whose reporting about the Watergate scandal in the 1970′s led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

“Can anyone tell me when an administration has ever regretted picking a fight with Bob Woodward?” Obama asked. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

The first lady was not in attendance at the Gridiron dinner, though the audience could assume the president was speaking of her as he delivered one of his lines.

`I’m sure that you’ve noticed that there’s somebody very special in my life who is missing tonight, somebody who has always got my back, stands with me no matter what and gives me hope no matter how dark things seem,” said Obama, proceeding to name a New York Times columnist and statistical analyst who predicted the president’s re-election in November.

“So tonight, I want to publicly thank my rock, my foundation,” Obama said. “Thank you, Nate Silver.”

Original post is Obama’s Gridiron: Jindal’s Night by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Eells/Bloomberg

People celebrate the news that President Barack Obama has won re-election in New York.

Following the first privately funded presidential election since the Watergate scandals that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, some House Democrats are trying to make public financing more attractive for those seeking the White House — and expand the system to include candidates for Congress.

Similar legislation has gone nowhere in Congress in recent years, even when Democrats controlled both houses from 2009-11. Nor has President Barack Obama pushed to overhaul campaign finance laws, as in 2008 he became the first major-party nominee to shun federal funding for the general election since the current system first was put into effect for the 1976 races. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney also rejected public financing, making it the first election in which neither major-party nominee participated.

The bills introduced today would provide increase public funds for presidential candidates and provide them for congressional candidates as well, offer tax credits for small donor, and impose new rules to separate candidate committees from aligned super-political action committees, often run by former aides to the candidates.

They were developed by a House Democratic task force chaired by Rep.John Larson of Connecticut that has been looking at ways to overhaul campaign finance laws.

“American elections have gotten to be entirely too focused on raising and spending massive amounts of money,” said Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine. “Politicians need to spend less time on the phone asking for contributions and more time talking to the people they represent.”

Original post is Public Campaign Financing: Congressional as Well as Presidential by Political Capital.

Photograph by Cliff Owen/AP Photo

A jazz trio performs during the reception at the Richard Nixon Centennial Birthday Celebration in Washington on Jan. 9, 2013.

Richard Nixon’s friends turned out for his 100th.

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Sens. Fred Thompson and Elizabeth Dole were among the politicos who turned out last night to celebrate Nixon’s centennial.

Hosted by the Richard Nixon Foundation, the cocktail reception and dinner at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington brought out old Nixon hands like Henry Kissinger and Pat Buchanan, who was the only one who uttered the “W” word all night: “Watergate.”

Buchanan, Nixon’s onetime speechwriter and a candidate for president in his own time, said he and other associates have been fielding calls from a Nixon-hostile press about Watergate around this centennial because they have nothing else to talk about.

Thayer Capital chairman Fred Malek, who is helping the foundation and Nixon Library raise its goal of $25 million for its centennial legacy campaign, said that the 37th president would take a very Nixonian approach to the fiscal cliff negotiations.

“He would be knocking heads together. He wouldn’t pussyfoot around.”

The evening ended with guests eating a birthday cake modeled after the house Nixon was born in.

Nixon’s brother Edward, and daughters, Tricia Nixon Cox, and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, were also present.

Stephanie Green writes for Bloomberg Muse.

Original post is Nixon Wouldn’t `Pussyfoot’ at Cliff by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris Haston/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

The cast of NBC's "1600 Penn."

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, a Democrat, and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican, will discuss “State of States” addresses being delivered by fellow members of the National Governors Association at the National Press Club.

The Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee holds a public meeting today on oil spill prevention, containment and response after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the Obama administration will apply fresh scrutiny to Royal Dutch Shell’s activities in the Arctic following a string of drilling mishaps.

President Obama hosts the cast and crew of NBC television show “1600 Penn” for screening at the White House. It’s a private event.

And it’s the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Richard M. Nixon.

Friends including Henry Kissinger, Pat Buchanan, Fred Malek and Ben Stein will gather to remember him tonight at a gala at the Mayflower Hotel.

Original post is Washington Daybook: `1600 Penn’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Robert A. Reeder/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Fred Malek

Putting out think tank studies to make a partisan point is a decades-long tradition in Washington.

One that came out last week offered a dose of irony to go with its claim that the Environmental Protection Agency is imposing an increasing burden of rule-compliance paperwork on the economy.

The two-page analysis, by the conservative American Action Forum, declared that “using Bureau of Labor Statistics calculations, AAF finds that EPA’s red tape burden consumes roughly $10.5 billion in annual economic activity” and “has increased by 30 million hours – 20 percent – since FY 2007.”

No word on the ethnicity of the BLS employees doing the calculating — something that at one time would have been of great interest to AAF’s founder and board chairman, Fred Malek.

Malek was a White House aide when he compiled a list of BLS employees with Jewish-sounding last names at the request of President Richard Nixon, who was worried that a “Jewish cabal” had too much influence in the agency.

Malek, who went on to become a venture capitalist and a Republican fundraising stalwart, apologized for his actions. But the BLS incident remains a lightning rod, especially for Democrats, who sharply criticized Virginia Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell when he appointed Malek to head a government reform task force in 2010.

Malek’s AAF board colleagues include former Netscape CEO James Barksdale, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

The board also includes at least one political figure who could make eventual use of Malek’s fundraising prowess – former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a potential GOP presidential candidates in 2016.

USA Today clip on Malek’s stature as a Republican fundraiser:

Malek bio from AAF website:

Original post is Malek’s Study Cites Labor Bureau Once Suspected of `Cabal’ by Political Capital.

Rick and Mary Nolan celebrate on Nov. 7, 2012 after winning the 8th District. Photograph by Steve Kohls/Brainerd Dispatch/AP Photo

That’s the number of years since Rep.-elect Rick Nolan, a Minnesota Democrat, ended his previous tenure in the House.

Nolan, who unseated Republican incumbent Chip Cravaack on Nov. 6, served in the House from 1975 to 1981, when he retired.

Now 68 years old, Nolan was a member of the so-called “Watergate Babies,” the nickname for the huge House Democratic class elected on the heels of President Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.

Nolan’s 32-year gap is the longest between two separate House tenures in history. Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania served from 1851 to 1863, including a two-year stint as speaker, and returned to the House in 1894 after a 31-year absence. He ended his second House tenure in 1903.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 32 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Harry How/Getty Images

Head coach John Fox of the Denver Broncos reacts to a touchdown in front of Peyton Manning #18 to trail the San Diego Chargers 24-21 during the fourth quarter at Qualcomm Stadium on October 15, 2012 in San Diego, California. The Broncos won 35-24.

Epic comebacks are becoming old hat.

Last week, the San Francisco Giants baseball club lost two games at home before winning three on the road to take a playoff series against the Cincinnati Reds. On Friday, The St. Louis Cardinals were down to their last strike — twice — before staging a rally in the ninth inning to stun the Washington Nationals. And last night, the Denver Broncos football team overcame a 24-0 deficit at halftime to beat the San Diego Chargers 35-24.

Republican Mitt Romney, who trailed badly in most polls before his strong debate performance in Denver on Oct. 3, has drawn almost even with President Barack Obama since then. He hopes to continue the streak tonight at 9 pm EDT when the men face off again at Hofstra University in New York. Romney has closed to within four points of Obama among likely voters in Pennsylvania, narrowing a 12-point gap less than a month ago, according to a Quinnipiac University poll out today.

Energy prices also are staging a comeback, with gasoline prices once again approaching $4 a gallon in the Washington area. The cost of living in the U.S. probably rose in September for a second month as a jump in energy expenses overshadowed smaller gains in other goods and services, economists said before a report from the Labor Department due out this morning.

Bloomberg Government is hosting a breakfast seminar on the “Political Realities of Energy,” exploring the effect of elections on the energy landscape. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will announce an investment for the Northeast U.S. to “help advance the nation’s biofuels industry toward developing regional, renewable energy markets, generating rural jobs, and decreasing America’s dependence on foreign oil” at 10:30 a.m.

Also today, Vice President Joe Biden attends funeral services for the late Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, longtime former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential candidate who lost to President Richard Nixon in a historic landslide 40 years ago, has moved into hospice care near his home in South Dakota, his family said Monday.

“He’s coming to the end of his life,” his daughter, Ann McGovern, told The Associated Press. She declined to elaborate but noted that her 90-year-old father has suffered several health problems in the last year.

Original post is Washington Daybook: Comebacks by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Delegates from Ohio at the Republican National Convention.

That’s the number of years since a presidential candidate was elected without carrying Ohio.

Since the 1960 presidential election, which John F. Kennedy won despite losing Ohio to Richard M. Nixon, the state has sided with the White House winner in the past 12 races, the longest such streak in the nation. President Barack Obama won Ohio four years ago by a margin of 51.5 percent to 46.9 percent. Every winning Republican presidential candidate has carried Ohio.

With 18 electoral votes at stake, Ohio is the second-largest state after Florida of the 10 or so states that both parties think will decide the Nov. 6 election. Ohio gave Republican presidential candidate an average of 49.2 percent of the vote in the past three elections, compared with 48.9 percent for Democrats.

High-profile campaign visits this week underscore Ohio’s importance in the election.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney is campaigning there today, joining running mate Paul Ryan, who began a campaign swing in Ohio yesterday. President Barack Obama will campaign in the state tomorrow.

Obama, Romney and their allies have supplied more than 29,000 ads on Ohio stations in the 30-day period ended Sept. 17, the most in any state.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 52 by Political Capital.