Donald Trump's return to the White House in 2025 has produced a frenzy of activity designed to curb government excess. And I'm the first to concede that the federal bureaucracy has grown too fat and happy, as have many quasi-government agencies and the plethora of D.C. Beltway-based nongovernmental organizations that receive public money.
But this date in U.S. history always reminds me of both the uplifting nature of bipartisan humor, and also good government at work. It was on this date in 1941 that the United Service Organizations was launched. Its animating star was an immigrant whose greatest gift was laughing at himself, a fading lost art in modern American political life.
Born in England, he was christened Leslie Hope, but he came to the American heartland – Cleveland, Ohio, to be precise – as a boy in the early days of the 20th century. He could get a laugh out of other kids by introducing himself, British style, as "Hope, Leslie," knowing they'd make it into "Hopelessly" and, soon enough, "Hopeless."
As a vaudevillian, he renamed himself Lester Hope and, ultimately, simply Bob, as he sang, danced, and acted his way into Americans' hearts until he died in 2003 at 100 years of age.
"Where there's death, there's Hope," Bob Hope would quip at the start of his USO shows. And on cue, the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines stationed from Da Nang to Berlin would forget war for an hour or so and start to laugh, which was the whole idea. "I have seen what a laugh can do," Hope once said. "It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful."
America was not yet at war, but fighting raged around the world, and though U.S. public opinion wasn't with him yet, the man in the Oval Office was beginning to realize there would be no escaping it. Our armed services had recently doubled in size, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was imagining what it would be like to command such a force.
It was FDR himself who recommended that the major social support service groups create a separate umbrella organization to offer help to military personnel and their families. And so, on Feb. 4, 1941, the Jewish Welfare Board, the National Catholic Community Service, the Salvation Army, the Travelers Aid Association of America, the YMCA, and the YWCA incorporated a new group in New York: the USO.
Over the years, the USO would minister to millions of people, and an array of movie stars, entertainers, athletes, politicians, and other celebrities would visit, encourage, and entertain the troops. One performer separated himself from the rest and would do so for nearly five decades. That was Bob Hope.
He never won an Academy Award, although he hosted the Oscars many times, and his pictures did well enough at the box office. It's not quite right to say that Bob Hope invented the monologue – it was used in Vaudeville before his time – but he perfected it. The secret then, as now, was to riff on topics audiences already knew about, such as sports, movies, current events, and, of course, U.S. presidents.
"Have you heard about President Kennedy's new youth Peace Corps to help foreign countries?" he'd deadpan. "It's sort of ‘Exodus' with fraternity pins."
Dwight Eisenhower was in office when Hope quipped: "I played golf with him yesterday. It's hard to beat a guy who rattles his medals while you're putting."
"It's not hard to find Jerry Ford on a golf course," he joked. "You just follow the wounded."
Hope himself identified with the GOP, but he teased them all, Republicans or Democrats, and he really did golf with them – and considered some of them friends. He was for Thomas Dewey in 1948, but when Harry Truman surprised nearly everyone by winning reelection, Bob Hope sent him a one-word telegram: "UNPACK." Truman cherished it.
Hope himself always seemed to keep his bags packed. He did his first USO gig on May 5, 1941. When the U.S. deployed troops in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and during the Persian Gulf War, Hope was always there, too. He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson, and in 1997 Congress unanimously named him an honorary veteran – the only civilian ever so honored. He pronounced it the greatest achievement of his life, and attended a White House signing ceremony hosted by Bill Clinton.
"In times of war and peace, good times and bad," Clinton said, "he entertained our troops and brought to them a familiar and comforting sense of home while they defended our nation's interests around the world."
At the medal ceremony, the 94-year-old honoree was content merely to thank Clinton while mentioning a charity golf tournament they'd played in Palm Springs with Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush a couple of years earlier. But in 1963, when President Kennedy handed him his medal in the Rose Garden, Hope was ready.
"I actually don't like to tell jokes about a thing like this, because it's one of the nicest things that's ever happened to me," he told the president. "And I feel very humble, although I think I have the strength of character to fight it."
When the laughter died down, Hope added a one-liner that cuts a little too close to the bone in today's revenge-infused politics: "I also played in the South Pacific while the president was there, and he was a very gay carefree young man at that time. Of course, all he had to worry about then was the enemy."
