Romney, Obama Take Break from Campaign Trail for Jokes

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney took a brief break from the campaign trail to appear at the 67th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York on Thursday. The event is organized by the Catholic Archdiocese every year as a fundraising dinner to benefit children's charities.

The dinner gave the two candidates the opportunity to lightly roast each other for charity, as well as get in some self-deprecating humor about themselves to please the crowd. Romney and Obama will next meet on Monday for the third and final presidential debate before the elections.

Here are some of the highlights to emerge from Romney's and Obama's attendance at the Al Smith dinner on Thursday.

* Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is the archbishop of New York, sat between the two men at the event, according to reports by the New York Times and other media outlets. Dolan spoke at both the Republican and the Democratic National Conventions this year.

* The Al Smith dinner is named for the first Catholic presidential candidate, Alfred E. Smith, who was also at one time a Democratic governor of New York. Attendance at the event is largely considered to be obligatory for any presidential candidate, according to a Reuters report.

* Reuters also made mention of the two men's mutual comedic target during the event, Vice President Joe Biden. Romney joked with the crowd that Biden's public statements often appeared to work his campaign's favor, telling attendees that the vice president's television appearances should be followed by the tagline "I'm Mitt Romney and I approve this message."

* While the tone of the evening was mostly light, both men managed to get in some subtle political digs regarding the economy, taxes, and other topics.

* They also each managed to aim their jabs at themselves, with Romney alluding to his assertion that he would cut funding to PBS by joking that "Big Bird didn't see it coming." Obama, for his part, targeted his widely panned performance in the first presidential debate, saying that he did better in the two men's second meeting this past Tuesday because he "felt really well-rested after the nice, long nap I had in the first debate," as quoted by ABC/OTUS News.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/romney-obama-break-campaign-trail-jokes-162000475.html

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