he loved a good joke, the richer the better,

and he'd throw his head back and give that great laugh,

but he never, ever could remember a punch line.

And I mean never.

-On the primary campaign trail in New Hampshire once,

he grabbed the hand of a department-store

mannequin asking for votes.

When he realized his mistake, he said, "Never know.

Got to ask."

-He would look at me, and he said,

"Baker, if you're so smart,

why am I president and you're not?"

-You can hear the voice, can't you?

As Dana Carvey said,

"The key to a Bush 41 impersonation

is Mr. Rogers trying to be John Wayne."

-Always the competitor each night,

Gampy challenged all of the grandkids

to the coveted "first to sleep" award.

-He said, "Aha!

I see the media is shooting you pretty full of holes."

Actually, he said it a bit more pungently than that.

And he said, "Why don't we go up to Camp David?"

At that time, his popularity rating was 93%.

Mine was . 93%.

And so off we went.

The media, of course, all gathered

as we headed to Marine One.

And George said,

"Now wave to your pals over there in the media, Al."

And they didn't wave back.

-"Fluency in English," President Bush once remarked,

"is something that I'm often not accused of."

Looking ahead to the '88 election, he observed,

inarguably, "It's no exaggeration to say

that the undecideds could go one way or the other."

-In his 90s, he took great delight

when his closest pal, James A.

Baker, smuggled a bottle of Grey Goose Vodka

into his hospital room.

Apparently, it paired well with the steak

Baker had delivered from Morton's.

-All four of us were singing

as we went back to the White House --

♪ Don't cry for me, Argentina ♪

And a few days later,

he's getting hammered by the press

for some extraordinarily petty bit of trivia,

and suddenly, he sings out --

♪ Don't cry for me, Argentina ♪

The President wrote that he was finally losing his marbles.

-He loved to laugh, especially at himself.

He could tease and needle, but never out of malice.

He placed great value on a good joke.

That's why he chose Simpson to speak.

-So, the punch line for George Herbert Walker Bush is this --

you would have wanted him on your side.

He never lost his sense of humor.

Humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements

of life .