Clinton launches zingers at Gridiron

WASHINGTON, March 21 (UPI) -- Former President Bill Clinton filled in for President Barack Obama at the annual spring Gridiron Club dinner in Washington during the weekend.

Obama was tied up at the Capitol looking for last-minute votes for healthcare reform Saturday, but Clinton joked the president was busy "polishing his Nobel Peace Prize," Politico reported.

The Gridiron Club is Washington's oldest journalistic organization and its annual dinner features satirical skits of high-profile newsmakers.

Clinton predicted Democrats would successfully steer healthcare reform through Congress. "It may not happen in my lifetime or in (former vice president) Dick Cheney's, but hopefully by Easter," he said, referring to the heart problems the two men share.

Politico said Obama also skipped the dinner last year -- the first president to miss the dinner in his first year of office since President Grover Cleveland in 1885, when the club was founded as an all-male organization.

The Wall Street Journal reported Clinton noted he was speaking on the night before the start of spring, "otherwise known to Al Gore as proof of global warming."

The Journal said Clinton also praised a speech given earlier in the dinner by the night's Republican speaker, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah: "Orrin, he's the wittiest of all the Republicans. That 's sort of like saying he's the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs."

Clinton also said of his own economic record, "My only regret in creating 23 million new jobs is that 2 million of those jobs were for right-wing pundits."