George Bush inadvertently came across as visionary and forward thinking in his State of the Union speech yesterday when he forgot the punchline to his “US must end addiction to oil” joke. He outlined plans about how America needed to pursue other avenues for generating energy and cut down on imports of oil from hostile regimes but by the time he had got to the end, completely forgot the punchline.

“It's the ultimate embarrassment,” One political commentator laughed, “You tell one of those long drawn out jokes at a dinner party only to forget the punchline in front of a couple of hundred people. The only difference here is that instead of it being a dinner party it was the State of the Union address and instead of being a couple of hundred people it was hundreds of millions of people across the the globe.”

This point of view was widely shared amongst journalists, who pointed out there were plenty of other jokes made during the address – most notably the notion of Democrats and Republicans working together.

“That'll never happen!” Republican spokesperson Chuck Hankman exclaimed, “The idea of us working together with those liberal, environmentalist, idealistic hippies is never going never to happen – we never agree on anything.”

This point of view was shared by the Democratic spokesperson Keith Wilson:

“Working with Republicans?” he said, shaking his head, “Not going to happen. As if we are going to reach common ground with those morally corrupt, exploitative, backwards thinking red-necks.”

Mr Bush's administration was quick to respond to the assumption he had made a joke by claiming his comments were all intended to be taken genuinely. They explained Mr Bush had meant everything he had said.

“We really don't understand why the public is having such a hard time believing Mr Bush's sincerity on this topic,” his press agent commented, “If you overlook his ties with the oil industry, his constant refusal to sign the Kyoto Agreement, his invasion of one of the most oil rich nations on the planet and the fact he is a Republican there is absolutely no reason to doubt that he means what he says.”