Both presidential candidates dropped their respective guard last night at the 63rd Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York, where the duo appeared as keynote speakers. Senators John McCain and Barack Obama each took a break from the increasingly negative race to poke fun at themselves before the crowd of politicos, journalists, and influential Catholics gathered at the Waldorf-Astoria.
The annual dinner pays tribute to Smith, the four-term New York governor who became the first Catholic to run for president with the nomination of a major political party in 1928. Hosted in association with the Archdiocese of New York, philanthropy is always the order of the night—the $4 million raised this year goes to underprivileged children—but the white-tie-clad guests tend to be preoccupied with politics during election years. Republican and Democratic nominees for president have united at the event for much of its history, and last night proved no exception.
McCain and Obama’s consecutive monologues made light of themselves and media coverage of their respective campaigns, to the delight of the crowd, and the opponents even traded a few barbs. Making fun of his memorably grand stage at the Democratic National Convention in August, Obama asked the crowd, “Can somebody tell me what happened to the Greek columns that I requested?’’
