With whom olyphant was able to. Estow his gift on a country who is able to combat his gift visually with president s. I am mike nelson. I am the guy you put up with during the first panel. We have a new cast of people to add their voices to the wonderful voices you heard from the scholars who are on the first panel. Once again, we have Miller Center people here. The Miller Center, one of its main emphasis is studying the presidency indepth, historical depth, with objectivity. We are in the business of doing stuff that editorial cartoonists are not in the business of doing , reacting to events on a as a newspapers cartoonist. We all strive to be as objective as we can. Provide comment, to provide opinion and something to provoke discussion, rather than aspire to settle discussion. The panel this afternoon will cover the president s from george bush i do not use the h w. He was george bush when he was president. When John Quincy Adams became president , john adams did not have to change his name, so i am sticking with george bush and his immediate successor, bill clinton. George w. Bush, the one who came toe finally we did our into the obama presidency, part of which he was able to capture. Example we only had to see an image of it, but it is an extraordinary work. One of our panelists, the one i will introduce now, mary kate can tell us something about that sculpture and about the president , who it portrays. She has been teaching this year in the Politics Department of the university. She was a speechwriter and theunications specialist in bush campaign. A former director of the Miller Center and a member of the history here held prominent positions in both bush administrations, both george and ,eorge w administrations probably did other things that i am not even aware of, that are worth noting. A senior fellow at the center has worked in all three branches of the government. In theng seven years obama administration. We will do the same thing that we did the first time around. We will take cartoons from each of the presidencies in sequence. Ofations that are now part the university of virginias Collection Library and are available in many cases you to or over ater their the Miller Center, where there are some others. Lets start with the first cartoon. For those of you who cannot havethat far back, you george bush on the top. And what perceived, they tried to sell and as he is perceived, then it is alter read can cannot anybody else read that . Alter egos or how we think of them when we think of them at all. They go. The 1998 campaign on the bush side, and i would say the top half is exactly not true, not how he was perceived. The bottom half is exactly how is perceived in our point of view. I rememberng having a tshirt that said lifts of greeks bearing wearing lifts. There was a saturday night my dark. Alled caucus after it played on this other side of him that nobody saw or knew about. I would say the left side of what they tried to sell is exactly what we all perceived in george bush. Missionso, 58 combat and lifelong public servant. Making aid when i was documentary about president bush. Yearsd it takes about 50 for historians to render , and howon a president glad he was to see that historians had come around on george bush and given him the credit that he truly deserved. Think that he was admired widely. I do think the top of this is not accurate, but i also am a little bit biased. What is being portrayed here, one of the challenges for the panel is that for many of you, we do not need to explain what the references are in the cartoons because you get them. Are thinking about the wind factor. Young people thought george bush was a with. Why . That is actually a very good question. Label was af the magazine cover that actually had a picture of george bush. Time, i was a career foreign officer. I had not declared political affiliation. I would go in as a detail the to work in the Bush White House at the beginning of 89. 49 now, as i like age. First, why was he labeled a with and why did the label stick . Partisan,u are a bush frankly, everyone who worked for him became one. Interesting, as a sidebar comment. You learn a lot about the leaders by looking at the attitudes of the people and the circles around them. He commanded a lot of loyalty around the people around him. Thee is something about reedy voice, having been a second banana to reagan for years, the sense that on the campaign trail, he was actually not a forceful and charismatic public speaker. He is one of those people johnson had a little bit of this as well. He talked much more better much better in private than in public. So, there are qualities there. There is emotional quality that would occasionally beat to the surface. A sense that on the campaign trail, he would spout conventional. And people had trouble getting a firm sense of him. Right wantedn the him to be a more muscular conservative. He did not fit that. There is something to this that you had to recognize. There is something in the image of him that people are perceiving. 1992 thatre that by he would have drawn him the same way. Next round, in the that he sticks with this image for a while. Frankly, because the caricature seems to capture something that is resonating with a lot of the american. You have to face up to that and understand it. This is a final comment. This is a reason why they are so historical. They capture something about the way people are perceived in their generation that will then be lost 30 years later. By looking at the cartoons, you can recover it. What i find interesting about the cartoons is how ingrained the Public Perceptions get in peoples mind. The Honest Campaign recognizes your liability and tries to push back against that, trying to push back against unforced errors. They are there from the 88 campaign, Michael Dukakis riding around in a tank with an ill fitting helmet. No candidate would ever do that now. Easily haveave changed the perception. Ofe of the important moments george bush 41 come the grocery scanner thing, where he did not know how that worked or the famous moment in the 92 debate where he looked at his watch and seemed to be bored. Candidates forp debate, we take their watches or tell them to never look at their watch. Him to go out and do some public events. Gas prices were high. Out toed to send him fill up his gas tank. Those moments, we actually checked, do you know how to fill up a gas tank . That is one of those moments that you just did not want to happen. Youve double and triple check every time you put your candidate in public because you do not want these images to stick in the peoples brain. We have not notified the presence of that character. Chorusa defective greek a penguin that he included in all of his cartoons to provide an additional dollop of commentary. The joy of these cartoons is that on the one hand, they are snapshots of the moment, but on the other hand, they are windows into a pyramid. What we start seeing in this cartoon is the departure from the era in which we regarded president ial elections as contest between giants. The making of a president in 1960. It was achilles and heracles meeting on the field of battle. Two titanic figures, either one who was worthy of trotting on a heroic stage. By 1998, we are looking at president ial candidate as diminished and comic figures. That has somewhat come the default setting ever sent. This is actually a very nice cartoon. This is george bush and George Washington walking down pennsylvania avenue. Anniversary,200th not to the day but the year of George Washington being sworn in. President bush was actually very honored by that and he got sworn in using two bibles, one stacked on top of the other. The bush family bible and the other was George Washingtons bible. He was so honored by that. Comment that brought this to mind was that same conversation with david mccullough. He believes that george bush was the most qualified person to run for president since the founders at the time. Did not say it at the time but said it afterwards. Well,rought it to mind as all the jobs that president bush had done before he became president perfectly prepared him for that moment, and it is the reason why we were able to get through the cold war without a single shot being fired. That is what jumped out at me about that. He was very proud of that moment. Only thing i felt was amusing on this one, that building is the old post office, which is now the trump hotel. What is interesting about this mary kate or others could fill you in. It is bad form to compare yourself to previous president s. It was seen it is not the classiest thing to say i am the greatest president since soandso. Simply to say that there are certain ways that they reference back to previous president s. Everybody wants to see mike kennedy. That is one of the interesting things i found in this cartoon. Says beautiful, and it is george. The second george is written in a different font. What is that font . 18thcentury font. Struck with the image of the other president in this action, George Washington, who has come down to us largely because of the pictures that we have of him as this bland and even boring figure. Solid and virtuous in every way, but no spike of life in any of the pictures that we have of George Washington. Just take out your dollar bill and look at that. I do not think any american in been a figure of such excitement and adoration in his own generation as George Washington was in his. People were crazy about washington. They thought he was respectable and an exciting guy. A sexy guy. He is doomed to always be the bland figure that his portraitist portrayed him as. Apparently ask dan kail in a baby carriage. And then punk saying, you must be so proud. Ask, apparently i had to but it is a reference to the tower nomination. Said that people opposed to john towers were engaging in mccarthyism. I find this very unfair. Little that there is a bit of background, which is that george bush first met john tower 1961, when george bush was Harris County republican chair in houston, which was quite a big deal. John tower decided to run for Lyndon Johnsons senate seat after johnson left to become Vice President. That is when the two of them first became friends. In 1968, i think there was a discussion on the earlier panel about the short list for vice 68, according in , nixonseachams book short list for Vice President was john tower, george bush, spiro agnew and one more, Ronald Reagan. Wouldnt that have been something . 1989 and at this point, former chair of the Armed Service committee and george bush names him to secretary of defense. It comes out that there are his love of women and booze and a conflict of interest investigation as well. It was the First Time Since 1959 that a cabinet officer was not confirmed. 45 republicans and 55 democrats. 47 53 went down 4753. Means twoe, it democrats crossed over. They voted yes. It was due to the fact that the democrats were in the senate and in control of the senate. Make is thatint to george bush felt very strongly that loyalty goes down, as well as up. He was tremendously loyal to john tower despite all the flaws that were exposed. Notearfully says, i will pull the rug out from my friend, and he stuck with him. Also, it set the stage for why he was so tremendously loyal to Clarence Thomass nomination as well. I believe he is inaccurately depicted as treating dan quayle as some kind of baby, and that could not be further than the truth. He went against the advice of , went with quayle in a surprise move and treated him as an equal because he himself had been a Vice President and he wanted the same treatment for his own Vice President. They had a close relationship, wayi think this is not the he looked at dan quayle. Philip probably has more. Thatis is about a speech quayle gave after the tower nomination was defeated. I take a more sympathetic view to the cartoonist than mary kay does. I agree with mary kate said that bush tried to treat quayle the way he thought a Vice President should be treated, but do not think that dan quayle was one of the key insiders of the bush administration. Meetings. A lot of bush treated him appropriately, but he was not a very influential person in the senior ranks of the administration, so this is early 89. Tower has gone up and been defeated. Quayle gave a quite nasty speech, basically saying tower was defeated because of mccarthyism. Runinvestigation had been by the chairman of the senate Armed Service committee. Not knowingad anything about this panel, last month i was with sam and jack reed on another issue. Basically reminiscing at some length. Day he feels that it was the hardest thing that he ever had to do in the senate. Timed known tower a long as all the senators had. He worked with him on Armed Services for many years. Wast of this investigation done extremely confidentially and very Little Details of what was found was ever made public. Sam nunn of being the latterday version of joe wise thing toot a say. Prudent thing to say. Of course, bush was going to be depending on people like sam nunn as an essential partner in anything he was going to try to get done for the next four years, including handling the confirmation of the person nominated to take the place of tower. Here, people noticed and 89. This is dan quayle making his political debut in a big way. He had been very mildmannered and here he is, making his debut 1989 in a hitman role that people used to associate with spiro agnew. It was not an attractive role for him and not an attractive role for bush to have quayle play. Sent oliphant is calling him out on it. [laughter] this to me is a brilliant sample of the caricaturist art. We have seen in the cartoons where noses, chins and eyes were treated in typical caricature fashion, exaggerated. Here, we do not even see dan quayle. The impression being that he is an infant, therefore of no significance at all. A character as a form of caricature, it is really interesting. The baby carriage has that , the monogram initial super fancy baby carriage from a wealthy family. That is a nice touch. Earliert not to say that the little bubbles signified dan quayle. Me of dunes berry at the time. It would always show president bush as skippy, the evil twin. That became a huge joke in the white house. Resident bush got a big kick out of it. There were many print photos taken of johnson union, bob gave an dick cheney, talking to an empty chair, talking to the itium and they would sign and send it to the president. You might recall dena carvey doing hilarious impersonations of the president. After he lost the election, he invited dena carvey to the white house and laughed at himself tremendously and did impersonations with him. Dunes barry cartoons, some of and the denatoons carvey stuff is at bush library because it was such a big part of his time in office and his selfdeprecating humor. Lets move onto the clinton years. Lets not move onto the clinton years. In one week, after he left office, it was the funeral of president ford. I went to a. There were a tremendous number of boy scouts who were the ushers for the service because jerry ford was an eagle scout. Went to theren Cathedral School and they knew some of the choirboys. President bush gave a eulogy for choirboysford and the i ran into the next day. They said, we want you to know that we had a vote and president. Ush gave the best eulogy i said, boys, i will tell the president. , i said i think the president knew that there would be boy scouts in the aisles. The tone of the eulogy was, this is what they can learn from jerry ford. The same week, i went to the National Portrait gallery. Sculpture is right in front of the official portraits of president bush putting one and 43. I loved it and i thought it was really funny. So i wrote him a note. I vote a lot of notes over the years. I have this binder of personal notes and i brought it with me. I vote in this note and said, you won the choirboys vote and you have to go to the National Portrait gallery next time you are in town. He wrote me back and i thought i would read it to you. Mary, overwhelmed and by. Imagine a guy like me winning the vote of the National Cathedral choirboys regarding my eulogy. Yes, i would love to go see the newly opened gallery with my new hit in place. I have to go out right now and kick some serious butt. The next thing you know that she did not come to washington. He saw images of it. There was a second one purchased. There is one at the bush library that is still there. It is one of his favorites. He really enjoyed that sculpture. Thank you for creating it. There is one at uva. Any other comments on the move marvelous sculpture . I love this cartoon. He tried to describe it you. It is depicting a couple of car salesman. Like salesman. Runs real nice, needs cosmetics. You have bill clinton and it says imagine your new car here. The punk in the middle says, who do you fancy we should buy a used car from . The reason i love this cartoon is because it is incredibly timely. This is from the health care fight. You can fastforward and basically take the Affordable Care act, put it where conservative health care is put in the Clinton Health care or whatever donald trump has proposed, you can put medicare for all their. It is perfect because that is the criticism of plans. Depicts the challenge that we have with health care and the system. Veryve a series of not appealing options that are and a lota politician of that is imagining what something could look like could fan finance it. Be of the cartoons will it is especially timely. Than the fact that it has the fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror. Think this is the best cartoon i have ever seen. Really, in a way, that image of isnton, the whole way that portrayed captures something deep about clinton and a lot of Different Things that i think only a picture like this, imagined in this way, could do. One of the things interesting about the oral histories that the Miller Center has conducted is reading through the ones released. You might recall it worked its way into the popular memory of that election. He famously wrote on a wall at their headquarters in little of thehange versus more same. It is the economy, stupid, do not forget about health care. A lot of people concluded that one of the issues that clinton emphasized when he ran for president was health care. Through loud and clear in these interviews that you can access through the website that he did not talk much about health care, that he talked a lot more about welfare and other issues, but when he became president , he inherited this impression that health care would be a major part of his agenda. Be the biggesto political failure of his first term. Let me lead off on this. The date is october 1993. Month of black hawk down and somalia catastrophe. Ins was a really bad month clintons first year in policy. Here is blind man. Linton in the park is this the bus to Foreign Policy . His seeingeye dog is also blind. He said, yes, sir, i believe it is. Have punk in the righthand corner, letting them know that the bus is coming. Next stop, bosnia. Dark, they are blind as to what they are doing and where they are going. They are looking for that bus to Foreign Policy. In that particular moment october 1993, it catches it. Things learned by virtue of being president on the job was that could make unpopular decisions on Foreign Policy in matters like add and bosnia and mexico, and so on. He could make decisions that he knew would be in popular, but derived a net benefit of being admired as a president who was willing to make tough decisions. Clinton, his way of making sense of the fact that people thought of him with much higher regard in Foreign Policy they did before. It is like taking your kids to the dentist. They never want to go, but they appreciate the fact that you took them there when they were kids. I will start with this one. Incredibly timely. February 11 1999, after bill clinton is acquitted on impeachment. He is dancing on the left, smoking a cigar saying free at last, free at last. Ominously, history writing in the book. Finger saying the moving moves on. This is the part in the sense impeachment, clinton was fairly popular. History does not just write once. We have seen the way that history continues to reevaluate bill clinton and his perceptions of change. That even inhow impeachment effort that fails leaves a mark in history. That should not be underestimated. What really strikes me about this, contrast this with the cartoons of 1993. Both of those cartoons you looked at, clinton is portrayed there is a side of the cartoons that are affectionate. This strikes me as a bitter cartoon. Clinton has soured in a deep way. The way he is portrayed even down to the imagery of the bongo drums, the irresponsible beatnik side of it. This is an angry cartoon. The contrast between that even that health care cartoon, which is so affectionate and this image it is powerful to me. My reaction, there was a lot of discussion about it. Clintons nose has evolved. The cigar, he kind of looks like he is naked to me and only wearing socks. As a mother, i am like ew. I think you are right. There is a sense of disappointment and how bill clinton ended his term with history looking over him like that. It is palpable. I agree that the assessment of when he left office are different. Ofas i recall, this incident will clinton in post acquittal andlry, going to africa playing the bongo drums and smoking a big cigar actually happened. There is something about being gracious in victory that i think is appealing to americans. Not being gracious in victory, not dancing on the berlin wall, for example. It is offputting. I think he captured that moment. Yes, we did not force him out of office. Yes, we still think he is doing a good job as president , but come on. I will take this one. This is george w. Bush surrounded by republicans saying, i will have to reposition myself away from you guys because i am a compassionate conservative. The third one says, i thought you said you will need all the help you can get. This is before the 2000 election, so this was right . Time, her, at the first labeled himself a compassionate conservative. There were many of us on the right who said, are you saying the rest of us are not compassionate . It was a real sticking point. That was not helpful that he did that. Fodder forhy it was humor because it didnt step on a lot of peoples toes and it is not a nice portrayal of other publicans. It does make a good point. People see that he is giving bush this big white hat. At this time, bush barely seems the white hat seems roughly appropriate to bushs size. I will just stop there. Add one thing. What is important is this is october 1999, so this is when he is running for office. Dynamic interesting when they run against washington or their own party. Like saying, i am not these other people in washington. I suspect, if you draw the same cartoon for years into office, they would all have the same color because as president s learn, you may have run against these people, but they are the people who will get your agenda done. They will help to fight your battles for you. I think it is interesting. There is a real trajectory to the relationship with other republicans. As captured here, he in some ways defined himself in distinction from the prevailing image of congressional republicans, seen as hardedged, callous and not at all captured by the word compassionate. He was running for president by running against his party. While he is president , after he wins and is reelected, people are saying he is the true reincarnation of Ronald Reagan that he is like his father, so he was embraced by the republican party, and since then , george w. Bush is essentially an outlier once again. Bush quoted one time on the issue of immigrants crossing the border without documentation. Want toent was, if they cross the big bend, we want them. Can you imagine a republican saying Something Like that today . A president who often said, i will not try to evaluate my performance in office. I believe that to history. Reputationanging within his party. One of the most eloquent writers about reagan and the bush family, a terrific book reflecting on all of that. Come to gripso with some of the things that you raised. Bush nk may bacon and both of those names are in the title. That is your homework. This is six days after 9 11. If you cannot read, the little boy is wearing a tshirt that says liberty. No comment. The cartoon needs very little comment. Is, it is an ambivalent cartoon and very sensitive. There was a way this could have been done anyway that uncle sam is portrayed as being. Verbearing uncle sam is portrayed as a noble, heroic figure. Watch out for the backswing. Uncle sam looks a lot like abe lincoln. That could have been the reading too much into it. I thought the same thing. Debate continuing between privacy and security. This sums it up perfectly. It is interesting that six days after 9 11 they would areize that Civil Liberties going to be part of what we end up having to think about and he in our immediate desire for safety and security and order. Time, was notthat just the trauma of actual events, but the almost predictable we were all predicting that 9 11 would be the first series of attacks. A series of similar attacks coming out of nowhere, and even worse coming out from within the u. S. Do not forget Civil Liberties. Attentive tong Civil Liberties, watching out for the consequences of wielding a sword. That was a timely comment at the time, when most people were not even going about that. Ok. All right. Act together. R requires a little bit of explanation. I do not know how well you remember this episode. I remember that. You go first. A little bit of context. 2006inter of 06 and and 2007, the white house and new attorney general come up with the scathingly brilliant act at thehe patriot time had been passed in a way that allowed u. S. Attorneys to be appointed without senate confirmation, if needed. The idea, lets fire several of them that are obnoxious to us, for one reason or another. Lets put together a list of put them incan just place. They began this process and fired about eight of them. In defending that they fired eight, there was talk of, we could have fired all 93 of them but this was not the beginning of the first term. This was not even the beginning of the second term but well into the second term. Outcry going on for a couple of months. Nvestigations the white house said they had nothing to do with this. All of the staffers would later have to resign. One of those staffers came straight from the white house and become the chief of staff. He had to resign. Another woman who uttered words had to resign because of the emails emerging and the white house had been involved. Link to karldid rove, putting a little bit of heat on the council. Here you have this cartoon. It was clear that the white house was involved to some degree in the socalled nonpartisan ideals. Fire all 93 of them. Deny it was politically motivated. The bottom left is saying, another brilliant idea. Then you have dick cheney. Ice that bush is portrayed you can barely see him in his seat in comparison to cheney. There you are. One of the interesting things to me as i reach this in march 2007 is actually that on the inside, cheneys power is actually waiting a lot in the second term. Public image has not caught up to reality yet. In this particular episode, it did not help. Bush himself had to go out and publicly state that he thought the firings had not been handled well. That famous expression was uttered, mistakes were made. No one involved in this came out looking good. They did not go viral. The next step that happened ,fter that in the aftermath was there was somebody at the Justice Department interviewing new u. S. Attorneys and saying, how much do you love your president , please tell me. There was a loyalty question added to the Job Interview that hit the washington post. There were rogue line prosecutors who saw an opening because they felt the Justice Department was on the rocks little bit. They indicted senator ted stevens, and that was the beginning of how the indictment got through because they thought nobody would stop the indictment of a republican senator when all of this was going on. A completely mishandled prosecution edit later got overturned by the obama attorney general lynch he got in office. There is a longer story with all of that. Looking at it from a comic point carl looks so evil, and he has we had himself over the years, another nice guy talking head on tv. Thatnot know if you saw cheney film, but cheney has been completely vilified. It is funny to see dick cheney and now itevil there is reversed in the popculture. Americans,sk most the perception was he was this evil genius, dick cheney pulling all the strings and it will be interesting how history evaluates that relationship. The george w. Bush library is a great place to visit. To pushed very hard back on this narrative that his decisions were controlled by other people. It will be interesting to see how those Public Perceptions change as history goes on. Recall very personally, one occasion where this played out. I was the director of the 9 11 commission. Both of theed relevant former president s and the Vice President s in the course of our investigation, ranging the interviews was difficult. We go to the white house to interview bush. Bush and cheney had actually asked to be interviewed together in one lengthy session. We ceded to that request. Basically 10 commissioners and me. The president and Vice President had their notetakers. Some of the commissioners were very upset by these ground rules because cheney would dominate the conversation, and it would not be able to hear from president bush. Exactly the opposite happened. Bush completely dominated the conversation. To get to work hard questions into dick cheney and get him to talk. Afterwards, the democrats said, maybe that was his plan all along. By the way, people who knew george bush a little bit, this was not a surprise. This was in the spring of 2004. George bush is not a shrinking violet. He is quite articulate. A decisive style. Him isle and talking to completely different from bill clinton, who also fills up the room conversationally, but andton is full of wandering burns the clock up on you and your question. Like this at all. He is incredibly direct, to the point. That was very much the pattern when we actually talked to him in 2004. Here you are a few years later and you know why. Let me ask a question of all of you. There are certain president s of whom the Public Perception forms there must be somebody in the administration or someone in the white house who is really making things happen. That perception does not arise for all president s. It arose for george w. Bush, the perception that it is dick cheney or somebody pulling the strings. Nobody ever said that about barack obama. Billy ever said that about clinton. Is it a partisan thing . Do they tend to think republicans are not smart enough . How do you explain that . That was too easy. Very smart. Clearly had his hands in everything. He had his hands on a lot of Different Things. We could talk a little bit more about this. We had a mantra of no drama obama. It was a lowkey white house. About what was best for the president. It is not to say that they were not people who were strong advises before him, but that might have never come out. This this one is a little harsh. We are now going backwards in time. This is july 2004. Punk in the bottom hand corner has nothing to say. I think you can read the caption in the bottom up her right hand. George bush is wearing that white hat. He does not fit that white hat quite so well in this image. Would it make you feel better to know that we have inaccurate intelligence . He says to the dying soldier. Look how, you have big dick cheney is. Standing over. He has nothing to say
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