OK, stop Barack Obama if you've heard this one: What's the only thing worse than having a 60 Minutes correspondent ask if the laughing president is "punch drunk" in the middle of an interview?

Having him ask why he's crying.

On the surface it might seem callous and out of touch for the president to say, "sorry, buddy, you still got the job" to the Treasury Secretary, who pushed for those ridiculous AIG bonuses, and didn't pay his taxes, and fumbled his financial bailout plan, and is probably doing so again. (The right is already calling that (with no apparent irony) the president's "Brownie Moment.")

Or to laugh about maybe not being able to bail out the auto industry.

But you know what? People don't want to see the president trashing his underling while they watch, or to see their relatively young and inexperienced leader betraying the slightest hint of fear about the already-terrifying economy.

And they'd downright expect their president to laugh at Steve Kroft's improbable question about whether America was in danger of losing all its genius financial executives to hedge funds, since the government has capped some bankers' pay at a quarter million dollars a year.

Here's to hoping "a little gallows humor," as the president described it, gives Obama not only some good PR, but the perspective to stop coddling his Treasury Secretary's banker friends. Because the administration's financial bailout plan is scary. (Seriously.)

Laughing moments are excerpted in the clip above; below find an embed of the whole segment.