President Bush showed his lighter side this weekend, invoking the smile and chuckle we’ve all come to know from watching him speak about how few problems we have in Iraq. At the White House Correspondents annual dinner Saturday night the president said good-bye and worked the crowd with a rousing comedic performance, something we’ve also come to know over the past eight years, though not usually with this much intention.

During the speech Bush noted that none of the Presidential candidates were present: “Hillary Clinton couldn’t get in because of sniper fire and Senator Obama’s at church.” He opened the speech by explaining John McCain’s absence, “He probably wanted to distance himself from me a little bit. You know, he’s not alone. Jenna’s moving out too.”

The quips were not all just for current candidates. With a house packed full of celebrities Bush wondered aloud if having Pamela Anderson and Mitt Romney in the same was a sign of the apocalypse. No word yet on if NASA has noted any killer locust swarms or falling mountains coming from space to confirm the president’s suspicions.

President Bush ended his evening by by conducting the US Marine Corps Band in a medley of patriotic tunes. The unofficial rumor is that his arms were slightly off beat, requiring a surge of violinists to stabilize the music.

Next up was the late-night entertainer Craig Ferguson, who recently became an American citizen. Asking Bush rhetorically about his future plans Ferguson suggested, “You could look for a job with more vacation time,” seizing on the criticism of the president’s frequent trips away from the White House during the past eight years.

The Scottish-born comedian was a big hit for the evening, finding middle ground between Rich Little’s tepid impersonations last year, and the merciless satire of Stephen Colbert from 2006. But the Vice-President was unable to avoid some heat as Ferguson threw out that Cheney “is already moving out of his residence. It takes longer than you think to pack up an entire dungeon.”