Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, an independent or something else altogether, it’s difficult to deny the contributions President George W. Bush has made to comedy. He has been like the mountain full of gold in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” except in this case the mountain is leaving instead of the prospectors.

When President-elect Barack Obama officially takes over on Jan. 20, he will not only assume duties involving the economy, health care, national security and many others, he will also be given the solemn task of providing this nation’s wisenheimers with stuff at which to make cracks. From George Washington’s wooden choppers all the way up to W.’s myriad malapropos, the President of the United States has always occupied a hallowed place in the pantheon of ridicule.

But there is a good chance that Obama could fumble this sacred responsibility. Because he is perceived by most Americans as being intelligent, has refused to (so far) butcher the language, and has no detectable flaws in style and delivery, he may very well cause great hardship to the fine men and women of America entrusted with the job of zinging him.

Yet like Joe the Plumber and Joe Six Pack before him, Joe One-Liner will sit in a room somewhere in either New York or Los Angeles with a lot of other smart alecks and find something.

“Right now we still have a little Sarah Palin afterglow,” said Ted Mulkerin, co-head writer for “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson,” lamenting the close of a fertile comedic administration and the recent election. “Then there will be the ‘Everything Must Go’ Bush jokes, ‘Everything 75 percent off.’ Then the transition from Cheney’s dungeon to Biden. Then the Obama presidency itself.”

Said Jonathan Morano, the other co-head writer on Ferguson’s staff: “It’s still too early. We’ll still get some mileage out of Bush. Joe the Plumber, a couple more minutes. Sarah Palin as well. But then we’ll see what Obama does. As soon as he does one thing, then the hook is in.”

‘Deep-sea fishing without bait’
Speaking of hooks, Billy Martin, head writer for “Real Time with Bill Maher,” used a fishing analogy of his own to describe the changeover. “We’ve gone from shooting fish in a barrel to deep-sea fishing without bait while Ann Coulter tugs on the rod,” he said.

Video   Who would play Obama in a movie? Nov. 14: Msnbc.com's Courtney Hazlett and Tamron Hall speculate about who would play President-elect Barack Obama, his wife, and VP-elect Joe Biden in a proposed movie. MSNBC

Obama could get the economy back on track, repair relations with allies overseas and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. If he does, it will signal an unwillingness to cooperate with comedy writers. If, however, he says something he shouldn’t (the recent Nancy Reagan “séance” remark, for instance, marked a promising start), or if he chokes on a pretzel while watching football, or if he shoots someone in the face, it might lift the spirits of joke weavers everywhere despondent over the end of the Bush Administration.

“There may be a grace period in the beginning,” Mulkerin said. “Obviously, we can’t make jokes about race. But now that he’s president, if he screws up we’ll attack as if it’s any other president.”

In fact, some funnymen and women welcome the change. Eight years of the same president? Imagine eight years of seeing the same standup comic at the same Las Vegas hotel.

“The Bush-is-an-idiot joke was so played out,” noted Andy Borowitz, a comedian who compiles the Borowitz Report at borowitzreport.com and whose blog also appears on the Huffington Post. Some of the headlines on his site include “Failure to Blow Election Stuns Democrats” and “Obama Releases List of Approved Jokes About Himself.”

“It was getting very boring and hacky,” he continued. “The idea that Obama is hard to make fun of is a myth. Obama’s performance at the Al Smith dinner is proof that there are many jokes to be made about him.”

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