The comedian’s take on the late president might seem tame by today’s standards, but it seized on the little details to deliver incisive satire.
“The way to do the president is to start out with Mister Rogers,” Dana Carvey told White House staffers in 1992, making a surprise appearance at their Christmas party as George H. W. Bush prepared to leave office. “Then you add a little John Wayne … you put ’em together, you’ve got George Herbert Walker Bush.” It was the beginning of a friendship between the comedian and Bush, whom Carvey impersonated on Saturday Night Live for his entire tenure on the show (1986 to 1993). Bush, who died last Friday and was honored on SNL the next night, was hardly the most dynamic president, or the most gaffe-prone. Yet Carvey’s impression was arguably the show’s most acclaimed, finding cutting satire in Bush’s patrician manner.
When Carvey joined SNL, the show was emerging from a creative period that had been light on politics in the absence of producer Lorne Michaels, who left the program from 1980 to 1985. After Michaels’s return, the show’s topical commentary grew more pointed, first with Phil Hartman’s brilliant work as Ronald Reagan, and then, as the country geared up for the 1988 election, with Carvey as Bush. Carvey had made an immediate impression on viewers with his Church Lady character, a stern and pious woman who sat behind a desk and lectured her audience and guests on morality. It was an apt audition for the presidency.
At the time, Bush was well known to the public, but he lacked the things SNL actors might seize on for an impression, such as a twangy accent, a propensity for malapropisms, or a reputation for scandal. Bush wasn’t a strong personality. In SNL ’s early days, Chevy Chase handled a similar issue with Gerald Ford by exaggerating that president’s reputation as a klutz (largely based on an incident in which Ford fell down the stairs of Air Force One) and by turning every sketch into a slapstick routine.
