Dick Cheney said he was running again. He said his health was fine, ’I’ve got a doctor with me 24 hours a day.’ Yeah, that’s always the sign of a man in good health, isn’t it?

Letterman’s joke hinges on ironic reversal: Cheney’s claim that his health is “fine” is immediately undercut by the detail that he requires a doctor “24 hours a day.” The punch line treats round-the-clock medical supervision as self-evident proof of frailty, not fitness, exposing how political messaging can spin obvious liabilities into reassuring sound bites. It also draws on Cheney’s well-known history of serious cardiac problems, using late-night satire to question the plausibility of public reassurances about a powerful figure’s capacity to serve. The humor works by inviting the audience to share a commonsense inference that contradicts the official line.