Robert Gibbs Kept Laughter Alive in 2010

While the President’s lame duck accomplishments have provided some measure of late-year lift, 2010 has not shaped up to be an amusing year for the Obama administration. Despite all that, though, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has managed to keep it light in the daily White House briefings, according to Mediaite’s research. Sure, we’ve kidded Politico in the past for its laughter-measuring ways, but why should that stop us from doing the exact same thing?

It’s still a somewhat silly and imprecise metric, but it does reveal some fascinating things. Plus, now when someone says of Robert Gibbs, “That guy is a million laughs,” you can authoritatively respond, “Actually, he’s 987 laughs. This year.”

That’s right, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs presided over 987 instances of “laughter” in White House briefing transcripts, out of 116 briefings and Air Force One gaggles. Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, on the other hand, racked up 72 yuks in 38 appearances. (Burton was most often called on to sub for Gibbs on Air Force One, holding 34 in-flight gaggles. (During briefings, Burton scored 18 laughs in 4 appearances.) That seemingly huge difference points up the first takeaway from our study: Nobody laughs on Air Force One.

An analysis of the Air Force One gaggles, usually much shorter than daily White House briefings and always off-camera, shows an average of 1.9 laughs per gaggle, versus nearly 10 laughs per White House briefing. The first conclusion that comes to mind is that reporters and press secretaries are playing to the cameras, which explains the off-camera hush. Many members of the press corps have made this observation to me this year, suggesting that off-camera gaggles are the more productive, substantive venue.

Of course, the transcripts are only as good as the audio from which they’re drawn, and it is possible that laughter just doesn’t carry as well aboard an airplane. Out of 51 gaggles, 15 showed zero instances of laughter at all. ‘

The other interesting thing about this study is that, if you plot the average laughs per day (excluding the Air Force One gaggles), a fascinating timeline emerges:

You can see that the merriment predictably dips significantly from May to July, right along with the country’s lack of amusement at the BP Oil Disaster. (July was also when Gibbs made his much-derided, but rather mundane, observation that there were a lot of House seats in play). Less predictable, though, is the fact that the gut-busting reaches its zenith in October, just before the disastrous mid-term election. Again, this is an imprecise and somewhat flawed metric, but the coincidence seems to indicate an effort to maintain a positive attitude. As is the case with many things that have happened under this administration, it could have been worse. While the midterms were unquestionably bad for Democrats, they did retain the Senate.

In case you’re wondering, the award for laffiest briefing goes to March 12 with 27 instances of laughter, most of which involved Gibbs’ Canadian hockey jersey sportage due to a lost wager:

Overall, Gibbs averaged 10.05 laughs over 102 White House briefings, which is roughly consistent with the previous two such studies by Politico.

Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton should take heart, though. He is widely expected to replace Gibbs as White House Press Secretary in the very near future, and although his laugh stats are about half what Gibbs’ are, he”s still on par with his Bush-era counterparts. As a wise man once said, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard, but being a press secretary is an absolute ass-kicker.”

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.