What is it with New York presidential candidates and the fake laugh? When Hillary Clinton unveiled her health care plan over the summer and went on television to answer probing questions about it, she began giggling, often uncontrollably, whenever the interviewer asked about critics who called the plan "socialized medicine." You knew she really thought it was about as funny as kidney stones.

Then, on Sunday, when Rudy Giuliani, who has dodged nearly every interview request (even one from the conservative bible, the National Review), finally relented and appeared on "Meet the Press," he answered questions about his mistress and his poor judgment as if he had just inhaled laughing gas. Of course, it was obvious once he bared those fangs that Giuliani would have bitten Tim Russert on the neck and sucked every drop of blood from his body if he had the chance.

If a Bronx cheer is really a boo, maybe a Bronx laugh is really a glare.

This wasn't always the case with Empire State empire builders. Theodore Roosevelt played the blustery fool sometimes, but no one ever called him a phony. His fifth cousin Franklin wasn't always on the level; his laugh, like so much else, was a weapon of manipulation. But it sure made you feel better, "as joyous, hearty, rolling, thunderous laughter as ever was heard on this sorrowful globe," was the way the writer Fulton Oursler put it.

Nelson Rockefeller's gruff humor seemed genuine enough (though his wife Happy's happiness could be a bit forced). Mario Cuomo would sometimes smile to get himself over a rough patch, but his mirth gauge seemed in working order. I can still hear Pat Moynihan's fabulous "Ha!" For all his blarney, humor resided in a zone of sincerity he could not bring himself to breach for political convenience.

Some non-New York presidents have been no slouches in the phony humor department. Jimmy Carter's famous toothy grin masked an essentially humorless man. Ronald Reagan's devastating "There you go again" jab at Carter in a 1980 debate was delivered with a rueful smile that was all craft. And George W. Bush's nervous "heh, heh, heh" is a sure sign he'd rather be somewhere else.