This morning, long-time Saturday Night Live writer Jim Downey was on MSNBC and was asked which candidate was funniest. He immediately said Obama. Then he explained that when interacting with Obama, he's just "a cool guy." Then after an explanation of the others he re-iterated, Obama's the funniest. Here's the clip:

Why is this relevant? Because the presidency is a large degree about personality and communications ability. If people actually want to turn on TV to see their president speak -- and if people on Capitol Hill want to bask in the presence of presidential coolness -- that's relevant to getting the job done.

I know that in this era of impending unity, we're supposed to throw in the obligatory, "But Clinton's personable and funny too." Nope...not the way Obama is. Obama has a gift of communicative ability and coolness that she simply doesn't have.

Six diaries in the last 24 hours about SNL last night, each one complaining that the opening sketch was unfair to Obama. The sketch is embedded in this link. Please watch it, as this discussion deals substantially with this sketch.

Okay, people, the first words of the sketch -- the VERY FIRST WORDS OF THE SKETCH -- are as follows -- "I'm Hillary Clinton, and I approve this unfair and deceptive message."

Last night Saturday Night Live aired its 3rd overtly pro-Hillary Clinton skit since it came back on the air three weeks ago.

This latest skit is a right-wing attack on Sen. Obama, in which it portrays a President Obama calling Hillary Clinton at 3am to ask for help in dealing with Iran.  

As former SNL writer Adam McKay has written, these skits are being written by SNL's head political writer Jim Downing, who is a right-wing ideologue.