Last night Saturday Night Live produced two sketches taking on the Democratic field for president. Though at first glance the sketches the theme of the show seemed like a skewering of the party frontrunner with Hillary Clinton dressed as a bride being told repeatedly she made a wonderful witch and with an appearance by the real Senator Barack Obama questioning her authenticity. There was however, a lot more going on.

With an appeasing and VP slot hungry Bill Richardson played by the former castmember Horatio Sans, with Joe Biden & Chris Dodd showing up to a Clinton Halloween party with the same costume and remarking how either might have been more noticeable had the other not run, with a slick kiss-ass John Edwards and a straight-jacket covered Mike Gravel, SNL took on the entire field painting a pretty sorry picture of Democrats. The theme was carried on with a skit late in the night showing these candidates and a Wizard of Oz rendition of Dennis Kucinich (Amy Poehler does double-duty playing both Clinton & Kucinich) conspiring to take down Clinton with the intent of “worrying about” Barack Obama later. Their plans don’t go very far.

At this point no one needs to point out the long tradition of SNL taking on power. Chevy Chase made Ford out to be a dumbling fool, Phil Hartman turned Clinton into a slick fast-food loving-fun machine (not that the image was hard to conjure) and Will Farrell gave us a vision of George W. Bush that probably resembles how many if not most Americans think of him today.

In 2000 so powerful was the presentation on SNL that it was revealed Vice President Gore studied the shows debate skits in order to figure out what he was doing wrong. Probably the one night of study in Al Gore’s life that did not result in a high-grade performance.

SNL has already provided viewers with a plethora of political comedy and will no doubt continue to do so. It will of course, also give some serious insight into the political race as well.

I always kind of perk up when I hear pundits note how rich the Democratic field is this cycle. No offense to the Democrats all of whom are accomplished in their own right, but I do find it interesting. Clinton has never held an executive position, Barack Obama has only been in state politics in his past and only been a Senator for three years, John Edwards was an accomplished trial lawyer but had a short Senate career and hasn’t done much since 2004 other than run for president, Kucinich is Kucinich, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden have had long and rich Senate careers but have little else at this point to point to, Mike Gravel is an admitted drug user and Bill Richardson, probably the most accomplished of them all, shows little sign of life in national politics.

There is plenty to point out in the way of problems on the Republican side, but it seems like for the moment that has been all we’ve seen in the framing of coverage. The Republicans have no one and the Democrats are just brimming with amazing choices. I don’t know how one figures that.

Rudy Giuliani alone, though one might question his lifestyle and politics, is an amazingly accomplished man. Mitt Romney seems like quite the business person and was a pretty respected Governor, John McCain a war hero who like the Democrats has a long Senate tradition. I would exclude the acting career of Fred Thompson from the list, but it seems to be the three Republicans I mentioned could easily go toe-to-toe on resume and life experience with most of the Dems. Yet from the coverage, you would think Republicans just gave up eight months ago and found newcomers, which isn’t the case at all.

So in short, I like that SNL took some of the steam out of this notion that we suddenly have a Dream Team organized on the Democratic side. I also have to say that putting Bill Clinton into the costume they did for the first skit was a stroke of genius and I look forward to more SNL driven Bill & Hillary. I would also hope that in coming weeks, they don’t keep a spoof Obama out of the mix!