Candidates Trade Barbs for Laughs

Just one night after their chilly final debate, Barack Obama and John McCain spent another evening in close proximity, with much different results. They poked fun at themselves, and each other, at New York’s Al Smith Dinner, an annual political roast that raises money for charity, reports the New York Times. The candidates sat at the same table, “without preconditions,” Obama noted. Each delivered a comic monologue that both tweaked and praised his opponent. Some samples:

• McCain announced the dismissal of all his advisers. “All of their positions will now be held by a man named Joe the Plumber,” he said.
• Obama discussed the dinner’s namesake: “It is often said that I share the politics of Alfred E. Smith and the ears of Alfred E. Newman.” He noted that he'd never met  the New York governor, who died in 1944, but “from everything Sen. McCain has told me, he was a great man.”

(More Election 2008 stories.)