Counterfeit Clinton Doesn’t Pull Punch Lines

The commander in chief, silver-haired and flanked by burly agents in dark suits and sunglasses, steps behind a podium bearing the presidential seal.

In that unmistakable raspy, chicken-fried drawl, he speaks. “Now I want to be perfectly clear. I did not tell Miss Lewinsky to lie on that deposition.”

He pauses, looking serious and wagging a finger for emphasis. “I asked Miss Lewinsky to lie in that position.”

Sexcapades with a young intern, a bagman buying favors for Chinese Communists, turning the Lincoln bedroom into a Motel 6, possible perjury … nobody is having a bigger ball with America’s scandal-ridden White House than Bill Clinton impersonator Damian Mason.

Life is very, very good for the Scottsdale, Ariz., man, who brought his act to Spokane’s Cavanaugh’s Inn at the Park the other night. Mason mesmerized a crowd of conventioneering Garco Building Systems employees with a dead-on, side-splitting impression of the man who thinks harass is two words.

“It’s been a really bad week,” says the look-alike prez, grinning sheepishly while his audience guffaws. “Ever since I left the Oral Office.”

The humor-impaired may consider it poor taste to ridicule a hands-on president who apparently feels a lot more than our pain. But as President Mason would say in perfect Clintonese: “Please, Paula, drop your suit!”

How this former salesman turned a party gag into a paying gig (Mason charges up to $5,000, plus expenses) is a success story as unlikely and compelling as, say, having the leader of the free world come from Hope, Ark.

Mason performed 94 times last year. He expects to be even busier this year; all the Lewinsky hubbub has Mason’s monkey business booming.

“Believe it or not,” he says in his own voice, “this all started when I won a Halloween contest.”

Actually, it began 28 years ago in Indiana. Mason, the youngest of nine children, was born with a face eerily similar to the man who would become president. His voice also developed with a natural grit tailormade for imitating Bill.

So Halloween night 1993, Mason dressed up as Clinton and wowed a bar crowd enough to win a prize. That got him thinking: “Maybe I can make a living at this.”

Mason learned how to age his youthful face with theatrical makeup. He bought a padded vest to add the proper number of cheeseburgers to the role.

As good as he is, friends thought Mason was nuts when he quit his job in 1994 to become a president for hire. Nobody’s laughing now. “I’m proud of myself, mostly because I pulled this off,” he says.

Mimicking the president is a grand old tradition of political satire. In the early 1960s, Vaughn Meader spoofed the Kennedy clan’s Cape Cod mannerisms.

Only God and the IRS know how many bazillions Rich Little raked in off his jowly Richard Nixon impressions.

Controversy is always great grist for the humor mill. Like Watergate, Clinton’s fiascos have become fodder for scores of jokes beamed via the Internet and repeated at office water coolers ‘round the world.

Example: Dan Quayle, Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton go to Oz. Dan wants a brain. Newt needs a heart. Bill just wants to meet Dorothy.

Mason, who swears he’s apolitical, says he follows the Clinton news daily, updating his act to keep it fresh. He made national headlines recently when the Decatur, Ala., Chamber of Commerce, fearing fallout, axed Mason’s upcoming appearance. That cancellation has been the lone exception to a booking bonanza.

“The best thing for me would be if Clinton sticks it out under more controversy and then resigns under pressure just before he was going to get booted out,” he says. “That’ll keep me going for another 10 years.”

The Clinton clone has performed in front of a number of political big shots, like Newt, but has yet to meet the real commander in chief.

What will he say should he ever get the chance?

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” says the faux president, slipping back into the Clinton rasp. “Thank you for four wonderful years.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 color)