WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush poked fun at himself at the press corps Saturday night and offered a new reason for overhauling the Social Security system.

Raising the name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush said, “We have to fix it or Rumsfeld may never retire.”

Bush noted – with a little help – the presence of a number of new Cabinet members attending the Gridiron Club’s 120th annual dinner.

Turning to Vice President Dick Cheney, the president said, “Dick, maybe you can point them out to me.”

Some of the press skits he had watched earlier in a long evening were about steroid use in professional sports, but Bush said that in looking out at the press corps he was confident none of them were on steroids.

“Those are all natural bodies,” he said.

Bush said anyone looking for a transcript of the evening’s program should call Doug Wead, the longtime Bush family friend who recently made public tape recordings of private telephone conversations he had with Bush before he started running for president.

The president noted that former President Clinton was recovering from surgery and said that “when he woke up he was surrounded by his loved ones” – his wife, daughter and “my dad.”

The former President Bush and Clinton have become something of an item despite their once fierce political rivalry.

It was as close to “Saturday Night Live” as Washington gets, as journalists assumed the personas of politicians in song, dance and wisecracks.

The Gridiron Dinner is a journalistic tradition in which, for one night, members of the Fourth Estate turn the tables on the powerful people they report and write about daily. The Gridiron Club’s motto is to “singe, but never burn.”

In a nod to 2008, they parodied the White House aspirations of Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, featured speakers at the white-tie dinner.

Richardson compared the Bush’s administration’s treatment of U.S. allies over the Iraq war to the NCAA basketball tournament.

“Sixty-four teams start and they’re whittled down to just one,” Richardson said in prepared remarks. “Kind of reminds me of what we’ve done with our allies.”

Hagel paid tribute to Johnny Carson, a Nebraska legend, by impersonating “Carnac the Magnificent,” one of the late comedian’s characters.

“Answer: March Madness,” Hagel said. “What do Democrats call my Social Security plan?”

Having observed their routine, Bush called Richardson and Hagel “a couple of independent thinkers, which in my book is a negative.”

Founded in 1885, the Gridiron Club is made up of Washington news bureau chiefs, columnists, reporters, cartoonists and editors. It exists only for the annual dinner and political roast. Every president since Benjamin Harrison, except for Grover Cleveland, has attended.

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