Paula Poundstone

By Jerry Fink

Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008 | 2 a.m.

We’re deep into the political season and comedian Paula Poundstone is in her element.

Poundstone, 48, has been a keen observer of politics and society for almost 30 years. She started in comedy clubs in the Boston area in 1979, moved to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles, where she covered the 1992 presidential election for the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

Poundstone will be at Boulder Station on Saturday expounding on politics, education and other subjects.

She’s a devoted single mother of three adopted children, but it’s just coincidence that her son will be competing in a gymnastics tournament in Las Vegas this weekend.

“What are the odds of the Poundstone family having that coordinated that easily?” she says during a recent telephone interview. “I had told him the reason I couldn’t go to his tournament was that I was working, but then I looked more carefully at my datebook and found out I was working practically in the same place he will be competing.”

This season’s presidential campaigns must be great for your comedy. Are you having a good time with the candidates?

I love watching it all, and my kids are taking an interest. My 9-year-old son is a firm Barack Obama supporter, and I don’t know why, other than his teacher is too. But I wish I was in another country watching it all, and then it would be really fun to mock and I wouldn’t care as much. I think if I hear the words “black,” “white” or “change” again I will go insane.

Who do you think is the best candidate?

I’m at a loss. Two weeks ago I watched six speeches and not one person said anything different from the other — both Democrat and Republican. Except for Hillary (Clinton), who gave some specifics, everyone made these speeches where they said, “We gotta change.” That’s a big thing. And “we gotta protect our troops,” which I don’t know what the (heck) that means. We sent them to war, which suggests we’re not protecting them. And “we gotta fix our education, we gotta get some education reform and we gotta fix the economy.” You know what, we were already in agreement on those things. There was not one lick of disagreement on any one of those topics. The question is how are you going to go about doing it, and as soon as you say that, then you’re going to find some differences.

Is there a worst candidate?

I don’t have a clue. It’s not even the candidates’ fault (that they sound bad) sometimes. I get stuck in hotels a lot and I flip on CNN for company and they just make me crazy. They’re just so awful. The way they tell everything is so bad, like if there wasn’t already a struggle, Wolf Blitzer would create a situation in order to be able to have it on his “The Situation Room” show. It’s just so creepy. So they keep saying stuff like somebody “played the race card” and they don’t tell you what they said. Saying someone “played the race card” is not news, by the way, that’s a judgment. They would need to tell us what they said and then we would go, “Oh, well, maybe we think that is or maybe we think it isn’t.” They do this thing of inflaming in an area we are kind of sensitive to. It drives me crazy. I really think my oldest daughter should be president. She can lie and change the subject like nobody I’ve ever met in my entire life. She can so outdo these people. It’s a gift. She’s brilliant.

What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve seen or heard in the campaigning?

I was a little disconcerted by Hillary’s crying thing. It’s not that it bothered me that she cried — these guys started so early on this campaign, naturally they’re exhausted and probably not always at their best, and when I get really tired I have broken down occasionally when I otherwise might not have. I think it’s OK to say, “Oh my God, I was tired and lost it for a second.” I see no shame in that; to me that’s human. But to suggest it was somehow a breakthrough, that’s a little troubling to me. I like her, but she says, “I’m the candidate with the experience.” OK, if you’re the candidate with the experience, why would you just now be finding your voice? That’s kind of silly.

Do you like the idea of a woman president?

I love the idea of a woman president if she’s capable. That would be a great thing. But if we have to have holding hands in women’s groups over it I would prefer not. I don’t want any knitting or embroidery to come out of it. I don’t want to share our problems in that way.

The political season seems to be beginning earlier every year. Good or bad?

Apparently it’s really not effective. If it were it would have worked for John Edwards or it would have worked for that guy who ran for president of Florida, what’s his name? Oh yeah, Rudy Giuliani. The good news is maybe the next time it comes around they won’t think getting an early start is such an advantage. My big political prediction was that Fred Thompson would be the Republican nominee, but could I have not been further off? I think he thought he would wait and this would build up excitement, and it did. But when he actually spoke, the letdown was so enormous. He kept talking about the Constitution as if he had something to do with writing it. I thought that was kind of nervy of him.

Are you heartened by the diversity of the field? We have a viable woman candidate, a black candidate, a Mormon candidate, and an old candidate in John McCain.

We also had a Hispanic candidate in Bill Richardson. Yeah, that’s exciting. We’ve had black candidates before and we’ve had women candidates before. Carol Mosley Braun (in 2004) was great. She stayed in for a really long time. She must still be paying the bills from it. When you’re not going to win it’s a great position to be in. You can kind of hold the other candidates accountable a little bit. She did such a service for the American people by remaining there as long as she did. Nobody seems to remember she even ran. I thought it was exciting. None of these candidates are the first, other than Bill Richardson. And we’ve had old guys before. I’m not excited about the old white guy candidacy.