Bill Murray Got Kevin Hassett to Say 'My Dog Just Died' on CNBC. The Smile Came Back

On Monday morning, the day before the midterms, CNBC's Squawk Box had Kevin Hassett on by satellite from the White House. Hassett runs the National Economic Council, which means his job is to go on television and explain that everything is fine. Also on the Manhattan set, for reasons of his own, was Bill Murray. That's a sentence that should frighten any White House press office more than a subpoena.

Murray was there to plug A Course Called Ireland, a six-part Paramount+ golf documentary series he made with the writer Tom Coyne, which premiered Oct. 25. But he'd been watching Hassett, and something about him was bothering him. 'Why is that man always smiling?' Murray asked, on live television, adding that he was a little concerned. Then he made a request. He asked Hassett to say the words 'My dog just died' and see what happened to his face.

Hassett, to his credit, played along. He laughed and asked whether it was Murray's dog or his own. 'Your dog,' Murray said. And Hassett said it, according to NBC News, with a frown. AOL's write-up noted the smile crept back onto his face afterward, slowly, the way the tide comes back in after everybody has finished admiring the beach. CNBC didn't immediately comment, which I assume means they were still laughing.

Here is the thing about Murray. He is a longtime CNBC viewer and a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder who goes to the annual meetings, so this was not a movie star wandering into the wrong studio. This was a man who has watched a great many economic advisers smile on that network over the years, and finally got to ask one of them about it in person. Most of us only get to shout at the television. Bill Murray gets to walk into it.

And it was a fair question. An economist who's smiling the day before an election, with prices where they are, is either very confident or very well paid, and I've never met an economist who was very confident. The smile is part of the job now. You see it on car salesmen and undertakers, and you'd see it on the captain of the Titanic if they'd had cable. It means, 'I can't tell you what's happening, but I've been told to look pleased about it.'

Murray's genius was in making him stop for one second. That's all comedy is: getting a man in a suit to drop the act long enough for everybody to see there's a fellow under there who also has a dog and also doesn't want it to die. Then the smile came back, because that's what it's paid to do. A clown can make a king frown for a moment. Only a fool thinks he'll keep it.