Washington ? It isn’t often that the president of the United States gets upstaged. After all, being the leader of the free world is about as powerful as it gets.

But Laura Bush firmly pushed her husband aside at the annual White House Correspondents Assn. dinner Saturday night, bringing down the house with impeccable comedic timing and a deadpan delivery that put professional comedians — such as the evening’s headliner, Cedric the Entertainer — to shame.

Before her husband’s re-election last November, Bush appeared content in the traditional role of the first lady, smiling a lot and saying very little. But now that the election is over, and given that her approval rating is more than 30 percentage points higher than her husband’s, the administration is putting her front and center on the public stage — heading an initiative to keep at-risk children from involvement with gangs and drugs, traveling to Afghanistan to thank U.S. troops for their service and visit with Afghan women training as teachers, even dropping by the “Tonight Show” last week for a chat with Jay Leno.

Traditionally, the president addresses the White House correspondents dinner, and Saturday’s was no exception. President Bush was heading into a joke about a city slicker’s encounter with a cowboy when he was stopped by a heckler: “Not that old joke — not again.”

With that, the first lady took charge, delivering zingers about her husband.

“George always says he’s delighted to come to these press dinners. Baloney. He’s usually in bed by now,” she said to laughter and applause. “I said to him the other day, ‘George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you’re going to have to stay up later.”‘

A typical White House evening goes like this, she went on: “Nine o’clock, Mr. Excitement here is sound asleep, and I’m watching ‘Desperate Housewives’ — with Lynne Cheney. Ladies and gentlemen, I am a desperate housewife.”

First lady Laura Bush, third from left, is given a standing ovation after delivering a roast of President Bush, right, at the 91st annual White House correspondents dinner on Saturday in Washington. At left is White House press secretary Scott McClellan, second from left is Jim Angle of Fox News, and second from right is Ron Hutcheson of Knight Ridder.

The audience — more than 2,000 journalists, politicians and assorted show-biz and sports celebrities, including the two quarterbacks of the most recent Super Bowl, Tom Brady of the New England Patriots and Donovan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles — guffawed.

She noted that she and her husband were “complete opposites — I’m quiet, he’s talkative; I’m introverted, he’s extroverted; I can pronounce ‘nuclear.'”

The president laughed at that one.

When she finished, the audience rose in extended applause, although one of them may have been a bit miffed by her success.

“I thought I could follow the president,” Cedric the Entertainer told the crowd. “But the first lady — that’s something different.”