LACONIA, NH - To show how fine a line there is between politics and comedy, Comedy Central’s ‘The Daily Show’, hosted by Jon Stewart, is in New Hampshire for its second straight New Hampshire Primary. In this article from the New Hampshire Sunday News (Manchester, NH), we get a peek at how The Daily Show’s reporters have gone from being unknown to “command[ing] a respect among media types and politicians alike…”

Witness the lineup for last night’s “town hall” media panel discussion, hosted by Comedy Central at the Center of New Hampshire in Manchester: NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw; Joe Klein, a senior writer for Time magazine and author of “Primary Colors”; former Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, who recently dropped her Presidential bid — and New Hampshire’s junior senator, John Sununu.

[…]

Sununu said after he got the call from Comedy Central asking if he would participate, he had a long talk with Stewart “and that was all the convincing I needed.”

“He’s got the funniest satire on television right now,” Sununu said. As for the panel, he said, “I think their goal is to actually delve into, in a light-hearted way, some of the questions about the way the media covers politics.”

Not to be outdone, Union Leader/NH Sunday News columnist John Clayton also takes a look at the “coupling of politics and comedy.”

Anyway, what other politician [Bob Dole] — upon spotting Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon standing in a row — would have the temerity to crack, “There they are. See no evil, hear no evil and. . . evil.”

Maybe losing inspires humor.

Consider another failed, two-time Presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson. While running for office against Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Stevenson once delivered a moving stump speech that prompted a supporter to assure the Illinois governor he would have “the support of all thinking Americans.”

“Not enough,” Stevenson replied. “I’m going to need a majority.”

And so it goes.

To give a better idea of how deeply entrenched the politics/comedy connections are, the New Hampshire Sunday News ran a picture on page 3 of a sign outside the Hancock, New Hampshire Fire Department that states:

“Just vote for one of ‘em, then they will all go away!”