And fifteen minute discussion. Were going to get started here with round two of president s on whom oliphant was able to bestow his gifts and a country on which he was able to bestow his gifts by commenting visually, and with words, on those president s. Im mike nelson, the guy you had to put up during the first panel. Fortunately we have new people to add their voices to the wonderful voices you heard from the scholars who were on the first panel. Once again, weve got military Center People here. And the Miller Center, one of its main emphases is the focus on studying the presidency in depth, historical depths, with objectivity. In other words, were all in the business of doing stuff that an editorial cartoonist is not in the business of doing, which is reacting to events on a daytoday basis, which pat oliphant did more than 10,000 times in his 60 plus years as a newspaper cartoonist. Whereas we all strive to be as objective as we can, the job of the editorial cartoonist, and pat oliphant, as well as anybody has ever done it, to provide comment, to provide opinion, to provide something to provoke discussion rather than perhaps to aspire to settle discussion. The panel today, this afternoon, which will cover the president s from george bush i dont use the h. W. He was george bush when he was president. When John Quincy Adams became president , john adams didnt have to change his name. So im sticking with george bush and, of course, his immediate successor bill clinton. And then george w. Bush, the one who came next. And finally we dip our toe into the obama presidency, part of which pat oliphant was able to capture in his cartoons. Were also going to see at least one example of pat oliphants great gifts as a sculptor, unfortunately we only get to see it in two dimensions. We only get to see an image of it but its an extraordinary work. One of our panelists, the one im going to introduce right now, Mary Kay Kerry can actually tell us about the sculpture and the president who it portrays. Mary kate is a senior fellow at the Miller Center. Shes been teaching this year in the Politics Department of the university. She was a speech writer and a Communication Specialist of all sorts in the bush quail campaign of 1988 and during the george bush presidency. The former director of the Miller Center and member of the History Department here held prominent positions in both bushes administrations. Both george and george w. Administrations and probably did other things that im not even aware of that are worth noting. And then chris lu, a senior fellow at the Miller Center, has worked over the years in all three branchs of the government. I dont know how many people get to say that, truthfully at least, including seven years in the obama administration. So what were going to do is the same thing we did the first time around. Were going to take cartoons from each one of these presidencies in sequence, all of them pat oliphant creations that are now part of the university of virginias special collection library. And that are available, in many cases for you to go see, either there or over at the Miller Center where there are some others. And lets start with that first cartoon. Okay. So for those of you who cant read that far back, because i know its a little difficult, you have george bush on the top, what they try to sell. And as he is perceived, and then dukakis, what they try to sell, how he is perceived. And then it has altered egos i cant read that. Can anybody else read that . I can. Youve got it . Here you go. Thanks. Altered egos or how we think of them when we think of them at all. There you go. I was on the 1988 bush Dukakis Campaign on the bush side. I would say the top half is exactly not true, not how he was perceived. The bottom half is exactly how dukakis was perceived, from our point of view. I remember being i remember having a tshirt that said, beware of greeks wearing lifts. There was a lot of joking about the difference in height between governor dukakis and president bush. President bush was 62 or 63. I remember there was a saturday night live skit because dukakis after dark. It played on this, that there was this other side to Michael Dukakis that nobody saw or knew about. But on the top side, though, i would say the left side of what they try to sell is exactly what we all perceived in george bush. A war hero, 58 combat missions, and lifelong public i was making a documentary about president bush, and David Mccullough says that it takes 50 years for historians to render judgment on a president , and how glad he was to see that historians had come around on george bush and given him the credit that he truly deserves and that george bush was alive to see it. So i do think that he was admired widely, especially by the time he died. So i do think that the top of this is not accurate. But i also realize that i am a little biased. So let me see if this is on. Yeah. So whats being portrayed here, one of the challenges, by the way, for the panel is that for many of you, we dont need to explain what the references are in these cartoons, because you get many of you probably remember, oh, theyre talking about the wimp factor. Theyre talking about bush as a wimp. For young people nowadays, they thought george bush was a wimp . Why did they think that he was a wimp . That is actually a really good question. The origin of the wimp factor label was a Newsweek Magazine cover that had a picture of bush and under it the wimp factor, which stunned. At the time, i was a Career Foreign Service officer. I was not on the campaign trail and, in fact, had no declared political affiliation. I would go into the administration, actually, as a detailee from the state department, working in the Bush White House at the beginning of 49. 89. It may seem like 49 now as i age and it all looks misty. But the question, why did first, why was he labeled a wimp and why did the label kind of seem to stick . Even if you are a bush partisan, and frankly, everybody who worked for bush became one if they had not been before. Right. Its interesting when you, just as a little sidebar comment, you do learn a lot about these leaders by looking at the attitudes of the people in the circle around them. And he commanded a lot of loyalty among the people around him. But why . There is something about the thin, reedy voice, having been kind of a second banana to reagan for eight years, the sense that on the campaign trail he was actually not, in my view, a forceful and charismatic public speaker, by and large. He is actually one of the people, and actually johnson had a little bit of this, and came across much better in private than public. Reagan, by the way, is just the opposite. So there are qualities there. Theres an emotional quality that would occasionally leak to the surface and a sense that on the campaign trail, he would just kind of spout the conventional pablum. People would ask him to say it to different audiences. Therefore, people had trouble getting a firm sense of him. And some people on the right wanted him to be a more muscular conservative, one image of him. And he didnt fit that, so but there is something to this that you just have to recognize. Theres something in the image of him that people are perceiving. I dont think that by i am not sure that by 1992, mr. Oliphant would have drawn him the same way after the gulf war. But youll see, he sticks with this image for a while in the early bush period, frankly because the caricature seems to capture something that is resonating with the american people, and you have to face up to that and understand it. And a final little comment, this is one of the reasons that the cartoons are so valuable as historical items is that they capture something about the way that people are perceived in their generation that will then be lost 30 years later and by looking at the cartoons you can recover. What i find interesting about the cartoons is how ingrained these Public Perceptions get in peoples minds, and for somebody who spends a lot of my life working on campaigns, the Honest Campaign recognizes your liabilities and tries to push back against that. You try to push back against the unforced errors and of course, the most famous unforced error from the 88 campaign was, you will all recall Michael Dukakis riding around in a tank with kind of an illfitting helmet. No candidate would ever do that now. And so, you know, that could have just as easily have been the perception here of dukakis, and then of course, you will remember and mary kate can talk about this better. Some of the more important moments of george bush 41, whether its the unfair i would say, grocery scanner thing, where he didnt know how that worked or the famous moment of the 1992 debate when he looked at his watch, seeming to be bored. Now, whenever we prep a candidate for debates, we either take their watches off or tell them never, ever look at your watch. I remember when i was working for john kerry in 2004, he was doing president ial debate prep in wisconsin. We wanted him to go out and do some public event. Gas prices were high. We wanted to highlight how gas prices were high. We wanted to send him out to fill up a gas tank. And to avoid the dukakis moments or george bush grocery scanner moment, we actually checked, do you know how to fill up a gas tank . And its not that were ever sure that senator kerry had ever filled up a gas tank but thats one of those moments you didnt want to happen. So in part because some of these moments and the early campaign, you double and triple check every time you put your candidate in public, because you dont want to be visual images to stick in the peoples brain. One thing we havent noted yet, which has been a presence in every cartoon that we have seen and will see is the presence of the little character there in the lower right quadrant, punk, the pigeon that was a de facto greek chorus, not a pigeon, a penguin, that pat oliphant included in all of his cartoons to add a dollop of commentary. But these are snapshots of a moment, but on the other hand, they are windows into a period. I think what we start seeing in 1988 in this cartoon is the departure of the era in which we regarded president ial elections as contests between giants. Think of theodore whites making of a president in 1960. It was as if achilles and heracles were once again meeting in a battle, two titanic figures and either one of them worthy of trotting on a heroic stage. And now by 1988, were looking at president ial candidates as diminished and even comic figures, and thats, in some ways, has become the default setting ever since. So this is a very nice cartoon, and this is george bush and George Washington walking down pennsylvania avenue on Inauguration Day 1989. That was the 200th anniversary not to the day, but to the year, of George Washington being sworn in at the same time that george bush was sworn in and president bush was actually very honored by that. He got sworn in using two bibles, one stacked on top of the other, one was the bush family bible and one was the inaugural bible. And he started the inaugural address by pointing that out. And one other comment that brought this to mind is that same conversation with David Mccullough. David mccullough believed that george bush was the most qualified person to run for president since the founders at the time. He didnt say it at the time, but afterwards and that brought it to mind all of the jobs that president bush had done in service to the country before president perfectly prepared him for that moment, and that is the reason why we were able to get through the cold war without a single shot being fired. End of the cold war, excuse me. And so that is what jumped out to me, is that he was very proud of that moment. The only thing they thought that was amusing is that building on the righthand side if i am not mistaken is the Old Post Office which is now the trump hotel. And what is interesting about this, and i would simply without talking about the current president , and mary kate or philip, you can comment, but president s, i dont think i think it is seen as bad form to compare yourself to previous president s. And while it was perfectly appropriate for president bush to pay homage to George Washington with the bible, its not the classiest thing to say im the greatest president since soandso. I dont think did he. No, no, i was referring to somebody else, actually. Simply to say, there are subtle ways that president s reference back to previous president s. Everybody wants to seem kennedyesque without saying im like john kennedy. Thats one of the interesting things i saw in this cartoon. And you cant really see what punk is saying but it says beautiful aint it george or george. Second george is written in a different font. What is that font . 18th century font. Its a pun on two georges and then the 18th century font. I am struck with the image of the other president , George Washington who has come down to us largely because of the pictures that we have of him as this sort of bland and even boring figure, and solid and virtuous in every way, but no spark of life do we see in any of the pictures that we have of George Washington. Just take out your dollar bill and look at that. Whereas in truth, i dont think that any american in history has been a figure of such excitement anded a adoration in his own generation as George Washington. People were crazy about washington. They thought he was not only respectable and had all the virtues of respectability but was an exciting guy, a sexy guy. But i think washington is doomed to always be the bland figure that his portraitist portrayed him as. So i had to ask should i read this out loud . Here is apparently dan quayle in the baby carriage saying gug, gug, mccarthyism, gug, gug and then bush saying, my goodness, listen to that. Little danforths first word in office and then punk saying you must be so proud. Apparently i had to ask as a reference to the tower nomination, and that dan quayle said that the people opposed to john towers nomination were engaging in mccarthyism. I i find this very unfair. And i think that there is a little bit of background which is that george bush first met john tower in 1961 when george bush was Harris County republican chair in houston, which was quite a big deal, and john tower decided to run for Lyndon Johnsons senate seat in the special election after johnson left to become Vice President , and that is when the two of them first became friends. So at this point, they had been friends for almost 40 years. In 1968, there was a discussion earlier, on the earlier panel of nixons short list of Vice President ford, but in 68 according to jon meachums book about bush destiny and power nixons short list for v. P. Was john tower, george bush, spiro agnew and one more, Ronald Reagan. Wouldnt that have been something . So now comes 1989, and it is former senator tower and former chair of the Senate Committee and bush names him, his old friend, to secretary of defense. And it comes out that theres concerns about, as herb parment put it, his love of women and booze. And there was some sort of conflict of interest investigation as well, and it was the First Time Since 1959 that a cabinet officer was not confirmed. The senate at this time was 45 republicans and 55 democrats, i believe, and the vote went down 4753. 53 no. So that, to me, means i believe that means two democrats crossed over and voted yes, or more republicans voted no. But it was due to the fact that the democrats were in the senate, in control of the senate, and that is why tower did not get through. The larger point to make here, though, is 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. In meachums book, he tearfully says to john tower, i will not pull the rug out from under my friend and stuck with him. It also, i think, set the stage for why he was so tremendously loyal to Clarence Thomas nomination as well. He, i believe inaccurately, is depicted here as treating dan quayle as some sort of baby, and that couldnt be further from the truth. He went against the advice of everyone who had all kinds of people on the short list for quayle, i mean, for the Vice President , and went with quayle in a surprise move, and treated quayle as an equal. I think because he, himself, had been Vice President and he wanted the same treatment for his Vice President. So continued his tradition that he started with president reagan, having lunch every week with the Vice President. They had a very close relationship. And i think he was this was not the way he looked at dan quayle. Philip probably has more to say. Well, it is about a speech that quayle gave after the tower nomination was defeated. I take a more sympathetic view to the cartoonist than mary kate on this one, because i do not join the dan quayle rehabilitation lobby. I agree with what mary kate said that bush tried to treat quayle the way he thought a Vice President should be treated and with appropriate dignity, but do not think that dan quayle was one of the key insiders of the bush administration. You know, though he was in a lot of meetings, and as i said, bush treated him appropriately, but he was not a very influential person, i believe, at the in the senior ranks of the administration. So here is what happens here. This is early 89. Tower has gone up and been defeated, and quayle gave a really quite nasty speech, basically saying tower was defeated because of mccarthyism. Now understand, the investigation of tower had been run by sam nunn, chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee. And so without knowing about this panel, i was with sam nunn, and jack reid for other reasons. And nunn kind of reminisced about the tower fight at some length. He, to this day, feels that it was perhaps the hardest thing he ever had to do in the senate. He had known tower a long time, as all the senators had. He had worked with him on Armed Services for many years. To accuse by the way, a lot of this investigation was done extremely confidentially, and very little of the detail of what was found in that investigation was ever made public. And so to accuse sam nunn of the latter day version of joe mccarthy was not a wise thing to say, and it was not as george bush might be caricatured to saying, it was not a prudent thing to say because, of course, bush was going to be dependent on people like sam nunn as an absolute essential partner on anything he was going to try to get done on National Security issues for the next four years. Including, by the way, the handling the confirmation of the person who was nominated to take the place of tower, which turned out to be a guy named dick cheney from wyoming. As the secretary of defense. So here, people noticed in 1989 that this was dan quayle making his political debut in a big way. He had been mild mannered on the campaign trail in 88 and now he was making his debut in early 1989 in the hitman role, that agnew had done for nixon or gore would later do for clinton. It was not an attractive role for quayle or attractive role for bush to have quayle play, and oliphant is basically calling him on it. Whether one thinks that dan quayle is underrated or to the first time tonight overrated this to me is a brilliant example of the caricaturists art. Weve seen cartoon after cartoon where noses and chins and eyes were treated in typical caricature fashion, right, exaggerated. And here, we dont even see dan quayle. The impression being that he is an infant and, therefore, of no significance at all. To not show a character as a form of a caricature is really interesting. And notice that the baby carriage had that fancy monogrammed initial q like it is the super fancy carriage from a really wealthy family. Thats a nice little touch. You know i forgot to say earlier, the little bubbles or whatever signifying dan quayle there, invisible dan quayle reminds me of doonsbury at the time would always show president bush as skippy the evil twin and he was either an asterisk, feather or little bubbles like that. And that became a huge joke in the white house. And president bush got a big kick out of it. And there were many prank photos taken of john sanunu, gates and dick cheney and people like that talking to an empty chair, talking to the podium, when nobody is at the podium and they would sign it and send it to the president and it would be this big joke. You may remember dana carvey at the time doing hilarious impressions of the president and after he lost the office, lost the election, he invited dana carvey to the white house and laughed at himself tremendously and did impersonations with him, beginning of a great friendship. And both the doonsbury cartoons, oliphant cartoons and dana carvey stuff is at the bush library because it was such a big part of his time in office, and his selfdeprecating humor. Move to the next one. Chris . No, im fine. Are we going to move on to the clinton years . Well, we have one more. In one week, after he left office, it was the funeral of president ford at the National Cathedral and i went to it. There were a tremendous number of boy scouts were the ushers at the cathedral for the service because gerry ford was an eagle scout. And so my children went to the Cathedral Schools and knew some of the choir boys who sang at the state funeral and president bush gave a eulogy for president ford, amongst other president s speaking, and the choir boys i ran into the next day and they said, oh, mrs. Cary, we want you to know we had a vote and president bush gave the best eulogy of all of the eulogyists and i said oh, my gosh, boys, i will tell the president. He would love to know that. And in hindsight i told the story years later at his funeral, that i think president bush knew there would be boy scouts in the aisles and so the tone of the eulogy was this is what young people can learn from gerry ford. And sure enough, there were choir boys there who got the message and loved it. So the same week, i go to the National Portrait gallery that had just opened their new president ial portraits wing, and this sketch of pat oliphant was there, and i loved it, and i thought that it was really funny and captured the love of horseshoes and the athleticism in a lot of ways. I wrote him a note. And a wrote a lot of notes to president bush over the years. He would always write back. We were pen pals. So i have this binder, personal notes from 41 and i brought it with me. So i wrote him this note and said, first of all, you won the choir boys vote and second of all youve got to go to the National Portrait gallery next time youre in town. Ill go with you, and you have to see this thing. He wrote me back, and i thought that i would read it to you. Dear mary kate. Overwhelmed am i. Imagine a guy like me winning the vote of the National Cathedral choir boys regarding my eulogy. Yes, i would love to see the newly opened portrait gallery some day with my new hip in place, which he had just gotten. I have to go out right now and kick some serious butt. Thanks for writing. Love, g. B. The next thing you know he did not come to washington to see it. He saw images of it. The bush library had a second one purchased and theres one at the National Gallery of art and one at the bush library. Its still there. It was one of his favorites. So he enjoyed that sculpture, and i wanted to say thank to mr. Oliphant for creating it. May i say that there is also one at uva. There is . In the exhibition. Okay. And any other comments on the marvelous sculpture . Let me take this one. I love this cartoon. Let me try to describe it to you. Its depicting a couple of used car salesmen. On the left it says conservative health care and its kind of a thuggish looking salesmen. It says like new, runs nice and needs cosmetics. And then from clinton that says imagine your new car here, Clinton Healthcare coming soon. And in the next corner, it is clinton, we finance. And punk in the middle, who do you fancy that we should buy a used car from . The reason i love this cartoon is that it is incredibly timely this is from the 1993 health care fight. You could fast forward, put the Affordable Health care act, obamacare, and put it in the Clinton Health care, and put in whatever donald trump wants to propose, and medicare for all. We finance is also the big Progressive Health care plans of how do you pay for this. It really depicts, i think, the challenge of the health care in the system. We have a series of not appealing options presented by politicians and a lot of it is simply imagining what something could look like if you could finance it in some way. So a lot of the cartoons will be looking at are particularly timely. This one is is especially timely. Ill only add to that. Other than the fact that the republican car is an old gt, you see that, it has the fuzzy dice hanging from the mirror. I just think this is the best cartoon i have ever seen about the clinton administration. Really in a way of that image of clinton and the way it is portrayed captures something deep about clinton and a lot of things that i think that really in a way only a picture like this imaged in this way could do. One thing about the oral histories that the Miller Center has conducted is reading through the ones that have been released, including most of the interviews for the clinton project. You can remember it worked into the popular memory of the election that James Carville famously wrote on a wall at their headquarters in little rock. Change versus more of the same. Its the economy, stupid. Dont Forget Health care. A lot of people concluded from that one of issues that clinton emphasized when he ran in 92 was health care. It comes through loud and clear in these oral histories that you can access through the Miller Center that he did not talk a lot about health care, that he talked more about welfare reform and other issues. But when he became president , he sort of inherited this impression that health care was going to be a major part of his agenda. He bought into that, and it turn out to be the biggest political failure of his first term. Well, let me lead off on this. The date is important. Its october 1993. To help you remember late october 1993, this is the month of blackhawk down and the somalia catastrophe. This was a really bad month in clintons first year in Foreign Policy. The haiti mess also, and so, what you have got here is blind man clinton in the darkening park. Is this the best of Foreign Policy, christopher . And his seeing eye dog, who is also blind says, yes, sir, i believe it is. Of course, christopher is warren christopher, his secretary of state, and then you have punk in the bottom righthand corner letting them know that the bus is coming, and the next stop is bosnia. Theyre in the dark and theyre blind as to what theyre doing and where theyre going, and theyre looking for that bus to Foreign Policy. Right. For that particular moment in october of 1993, it just kind of catches it. One of the things that clinton learned by virtue of being president on the job is that he could make unpopular decisions on Foreign Policy in matters like haiti and bosnia, and mexico and so on. He could make decisions that in the short term he knew would be unpopular and yet derive the net benefit of being admired as a president who was willing to make tough decisions. And clinton, his own way of making sense of the fact that by the end of his first term, people thought of him with much high regard in Foreign Policy than they had before, was he said its 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, and so he learned something about Foreign Policy by virtue of having to be the president overseeing Foreign Policy. So, i will start with this one. Incredibly timely. February 11th, 1999. This is after bill clinton is acquitted on impeachment. He is dancing on the left, playing bongoes, smoking a cigar saying free at last, free at last. Break out the broads. Im free at last. And then you have ominous history writing, punk is saying the moving finger writes and in moving on. Punk may be wrong on this one, but people will remember the postimpeachment, clinton was fairly popular and left the office fairly popular, and history does not write once. We have seen the way that history has continued to evaluate bill clinton and the perception has changed over the last couple of years as well, but it shows that the impeachment effort that fails still leaves a fail in history, and something not to be underestimated either in 1999 or in 2019. Dwha what strikes me about this if contrast this with the cartoons of 93. In some respects, both those cartoons you just looked at, clinton is portrayed theyre poking fun at him, but theres also a side of the cartoons that are affectionate. I must say, this strikes me as a bitter cartoon. The view of clinton has soured in some deep way. And the way hes portrayed, you know, even down to the imagery of the bongo drums, sort of the irresponsible beatnick side of it. This is an angry cartoon. And the contrast between that and even that health care cartoon, which in a way is really so affectionate. This image is powerful to me. Yeah. My reaction in the previous panel, there was a lot of discussion of noses. Clintons nose has evolved here since 1993 and the cigar. He kind of looks like hes naked to me, only wearing socks, and the bongo drums. Just as a mother, im look, ew. I think youre right, the sense of disappointment in how bill clinton ended his term with history looking over him like that is palpable. I agree that the assessments of when he left office are very different from how they are now, in the opposite way of how it was with george bush. As i recall, this incident of bill clinton in sort of postacquittal revelry, going to africa, playing the bongo drums and smoking a big cigar that, actually happened. You know, theres something about being gracious in victory that i think is appealing to americans and not being gracious in victory, not dancing on the berlin wall, for example. Right. In george bushs case is offputting. And pat oliphant captured we did not force him out of office and yes, we still think hes doing a good job as president , but come on. I will take this one. So this is george w. Bush, surrounded by republicans, saying im going to have to reposition myself away from you guys. Im a compassionate conservative. And one of them says, what the hell is that, gw . And the third one says, i thought you said you would need all the help you can get. This is before the 2000 election. Right . October of 1999, right. I remember at the time when he first labeled himself as a compassionate conservative, there were many of us on the right who said, hey, wait a minute. Are you saying the rest of us arent compassionate . It was a real sticking point. Arthur brooks has written books on this that that was not helpful, that he did that. And i can see why it was fodder for humor because it did step on a lot of peoples toes. Its not a very nice portrayal of the other republicans. They look like something out of the good, the bad and the ugly but it makes a good point. Whats your take, philip . Well, you will see that he has given bush this big white hat, and he is going to use the motif again. At this time, actually, bush the white hat seems roughly appropriate to bushs size. This, too, will change in the portrayals and i will just stop there. Let me just add one thing. Whats important here is that this is october of 99. This is when he is running for office. And its this interesting dynamic when president ial candidates either run against washington or run against their own party. And hes saying like, look, im not like these other people in washington. This is not inconsistent with the way bill clinton ran for office, barack obama ran for office. And i suspect if you were to draw the same cartoon four years into office, they would all have the same color again, whether its white or black, depending on your perspective. As president s learn, you may have run against these people, but these are the people that will help get your legislative agenda, help protect you in times of impeachment, help fight your battles for you. It doesnt become that us versus them mentality once youre in office. Its interesting. Theres a real trajectory with george w. Bushs relationship with other republicans. As captured here, he really defined himself with the distinction of prevailing image of Congressional Republicans who were seen as hardedged and callous and not at all captured by the word compassionate. So in a sense, he was running for president by running against his party. When he is president , after he wins and is reelected, people are saying he is the true incarnation of Ronald Reagan. Hes more like Ronald Reagan than he is like his father. He was embraced by the republican party. And since then, with the rise of donald trump, george w. Bush is essentially an outlier once again. I remember bush quoted on the issue of immigrants crossing the border without documentation, and his comment is, if theyre willing to cross the big bend, we want them. Can you imagine a republican saying anything like that today . So, bush is a president who often said im not going to try to evaluate my performance in office. Im going to leave that to history. Well, history is going to have an interesting time with his changing reputation within his own party. Incidentally, perhaps the most eloquent writers if youre interested in the subject about reagan and the bushes and how george w. Bush is trying to reconcile that, carl canon wrote just a terrific book reflecting on all of that which ill just give a little shoutout to carl because its trying to come to grips with some of the things you just raised, mike. What is it called, do you know . I think reagan and bush as both those names are in the title. Thats your homework. So this is six days after 9 11. If you cant read, the little boy is wearing a tshirt that says Civil Liberties. There is no pun. There is no comment, and the cartoon needs very little comment from me except one thing, its an ambivalent cartoon and very sensitive. You see, there was a way this could have been done in which uncle sam is portrayed as being overbearing and too muscular. Actually, uncle sam in the cartoon is portrayed as a noble, heroic figure, but watch out for the backswing, kid. I dont know if this is unintentional. Uncle sam looks a lot like abraham lincoln, which then harkened back to suspending the writ of habeas corpus and i dont know if im reading too much into it. I thought the same thing, it looked like lincoln. It just goes to the continuing debate between privacy and security and sums it up perfectly. It is interesting, though, that six days after 9 11 that pat oliphant would realize that Civil Liberties are going to be part of what were going to end up having to think about and be concerned about in our understandable and immediate desire for safety and security and order. And i think, you know, if you recall that time, there was not just the trauma of the actual events, but there was the almost predictable, or we were all predicting that 9 11 would be the first of a series of attacks so that was the beginning rather than the end of a series of similar attacks that were coming out of nowhere and even worse, coming out from within the United States. And the idea of being of saying, dont forget Civil Liberties, and uncle sam being attentive to Civil Liberties, at least telling Civil Liberties to watch out for the consequences of wielding the sword. I think that was an extraordinarily timely comment at a time when most people werent even thinking about that. All right. This is not the other one . Oh, yeah. Okay. There he is. Okay. Hold on. All right. Now weve got our act together. So this cartoon requires a little bit of explanation. This is i dont know how well you remember this episode, mary kate, about the u. S. Attorneys in 06, 07. Yeah, i remember that, but you go first. So, this is march 07. A little context. In the winter of 0607 the white house and the new attorney general, al gonzalez, come up with the scathingly brilliant idea that the patriot act at the time had been passed in a way that allowed u. S. Attorneys to be appointed without Senate Confirmation if needed. And someone had the idea, lets fire several of them that are kind of obnoxious to us for one reason or another, and put together a list of them and we can throw appointees into their place without having to go through Senate Confirmation quickly. And they actually began this process and notoriously, i think, fired eight of them. And then in defending that they fired eight, there was talk of, well, you know what . Of course we could have fired all 93 of them. As president s do always at the beginning of their first term, but this was not the beginning of the first term. This is not even the beginning of the second term. This is well into the second term. So theres an outcry thats going on for a couple of months by the time this cartoon is written. Investigations have at first, various people at the Justice Department said the white house had nothing to do with all of this. All of the staffers who uttered such words would later have to resign. One of those staffers had come straight from the white house and had become gonzalezs chief of staff. He had to resign. Another woman at the Justice Department who uttered words like that also had to resign because the emails emerged and it turns out the white house had been involved and there were political issues and some of this did link to karl rove who was putting maybe a little bit of the heat on the white house Harriet Miers. So here you have this cartoon. Now as all of these emails were coming out and it was clear that the white house and rove were involved to some degree in these socalled nonpartisan ideas about the u. S. Attorneys. Fire all of the u. S. Attorney, the light bulb goes off, all 93 of them. We can claim it was Harriet Miers idea, deny it was politically motivated. And you see dr. Strangerove. Punk saying another brilliant idea. Then you have dick cheney. Notice now bush portrayed as practically you can barely see him in his seat compared to cheney. Karl has a brilliant idea. So there you are. One of the interesting things as i read this in march of 07 is r actually on the inside, cheneys power is actually already really waning a lot in the second term. The public image hasnt caught up to that reality yet. And, actually, in my view, roves influence is also waning. And this particular episode didnt help. Bush himself had to go out and publicly state that he thought the firings of the eight had not been handled well. That famous expression was uttered, mistakes were made. So no one involved in this came out looking good, and, of course, they did not go fire all 93 u. S. Attorneys. The next step that happened after that, in the aftermath was there was somebody at the Justice Department who was interviewing new u. S. Attorneys and saying, how much do you love our president , please tell me. Do you remember that, fillp . I do not. There was a loyalty question added to the Job Interview and that hit the Washington Post and there were rogue line prosecutors who saw an opening, because they felt that the Justice Department was, you know, on the rocks a little bit. And they indicted senator ted stevens and that was the beginning of how that indictment got through because they thought nobody at the Justice Department would stop the indictment of a republican senator when this was going on. And as we all know, that was a completely mishandled prosecution and got later overturned by the obama attorney general once he got in office. And that was there was a long are story with all that. The thing that struck me, looking at it from a sort of a comic point of view was that karl rove there looks so evil, rehabbed himself over the years. Its just sort of another nice guy talking head kind of on tv. Meanwhile, i dont know if you saw that cheney film that came out, cheneys been completely vilified. Its interesting to see cheney benign there with karl rove looking so evil. When nowadays, its sort of reversed in the pop culture. One other thing that i think is interesting if you ask most americans, at least at the time, the perception was, karl rove, this evil genius. Dick cheney pulling all of the strings. And george w. Bush being small. It will be interesting how history evaluates that relationship. If any of you have been to the george w. Bush library, its a wonderful place to visit. Obviously, they tried very hard more than anybody to push back on the narrative that his decisions were controlled by other people. It will be interesting to see how Public Perceptions changes history, goes on. Yeah. I recall very personally one occasion where this played out. I was the directorch the 9 11 commission. We interviewed we interviewed both of the relevant former president s, bush and clinton and the Vice President s cheney and gore, in the course of our investigation. Arranging these interviews was difficult. So, we go to the white house to interview bush. Bush and cheney actually had asked to be interviewed together at the white house in one lengthy session. We acceded to that request. The fear of its basically ten commissioners and me. And then the president and Vice President had their note takers. The commissioners were very upset some of the commissioners, the democrats were very upset by these ground rules because cheney would dominate the conversation and they wouldnt be able to hear from bush. Of course, exactly the opposite happened. Bush completely dominated the conversation. And actually, he had to work hard to actually get questions into cheney and get cheney in to talk. Now, then, afterwards, the democrats said, oh, maybe that was cheneys plan all along. But it was by the way, people who knew bush a little bit and knew a little bit about this relationship, this was not a surprise. For sure, it was not and this is in early this is in the spring of 04. And bush is not a shrinking violet. And hes quite articulate. And he has a characteristic decisive style, by the way, his style in talking to him is entirely different from clinton who also fills up the room conversationally. But clinton is just full of wandering digressions and musing. And speculations. And burns the clock up on you. And bush is directly to the point, key point, boom, boom, boom next. That was very much the pattern when we actually talked to him in 04. But here you are, a few years later, and you know why. Let me ask a question of all of you, but i wonder, theres certain president s of whom the Public Perception forms that there must be somebody in their administration or somebody in their white house whos really making things happen. That perception doesnt arise for all president s. For example, it arose for george w. Bush. For perception, cheney or rove, somebodys pulling the strings. President trump, steve bannon. Nobody ever said that about barack obama. Nobody ever said that about bill clinton. Is it a partisan thing. Is it the press tends to think republicans arent smart enough to do it on their own and there must be somebody else behind them and democrats are sma smart enough . How do you explain this . I mean, just answered the question. That was too easy. The question is dont you agree . Look, i did not work with bill clinton. Although i certainly spent time with bill clinton. Barack obama you could say many things about him. On his face, very smart. Very professorial. Clearly had his hands on everythi everything. Part of it is the ethos of the white house. We could talk more about this. We had a mantra, no drama obama. It was a very low key white house. We didnt leak. We didnt write books after we left. It was all about what was doing what was best for the president and so, its not to say there werent people who werent strong advisers before him, but that may not have came out. Yeah, this is boy, this next one is this ones a little harsh. Well, now, were going backwards in time. This is july 04. And punk in the bottom righthand corner has nothing to say. I think you can read the caption in the upper righthand. Its bush who is wearing that white hat you that saw in an earlier cartoon who doesnt fit that white hat quite so well in this image. Would it make it better to know we had inaccurate intelligence, hes saying to the dying soldier. And of course, you have look how big dick cheney is standing over he has nothing to say in this cartoon. Again, the image doesnt require much commentary for me. Six months after this was written, i spent quite a bit of time in iraq and did for the next couple of years that far so a lot of these issues are very close for me. I would just say, just to help you set the context, july 04 is really a point at which the war in iraq really starts to start going south. Things were not going well and had been gradually unraveling. The u. N. Envoy to iraq was killed in a truck bomb in 03 and then things started to degrade in sort of a slow incremental way. But really, the whole country burst into flames during the second half of 2004. Actually, things had gotten so bad when it burst into flames, frankly, we had a very bloody fight in anbar province, sadr city, baghdad and south of iraq, just hold the american position, we almost lost the war in the second half of 2004. And the fighting was very bloody in the second half of 2004. Thats just getting going here. But at the beginning of 05, theyve stabilized the situation a bit and then they started getting overly hopeful again. Then, we go through more cycles like this. But here we are, this cartoon is set as the country is beginning to explode. Olyphant thinks its time to offer this image. For those that dont know the reference, and i actually did not know the reference. I had to look it up, is pieta pieta is a famous statue in vatican city where mary is holding jesus. So its its this is i think one of the most insightful but i think perhaps one of the harshest of the cartoons we had a chance to look at. Might be one of the truest, i guess. Theres an irony here which is you see here, president bush, with i think an expression on his face that includes compassion, holding this fallen soldier. The irony is after leaving office and ever since leaving office this has been a major activity of former president bush. The Wounded Warriors program. Right. And so on. Im also struck in this picture, a totally different kind of comment but whenever cheney is portrayed theres no caricature to it at all. This is a line drawing of Vice President cheney. I have no idea what to make of that. Is it that you cant caricature cheney, that hes such a caricature in himself . I dont know. Its as if they would draw cheney the way if he was a caricature. So, with the resident obama one ill take this one. This is from march of 2007. This is a month after barack obama jumped into the race to run for president. On the left is Hillary Clinton and barack obama wrestling over the black vote. And clinton is saying the black vote is mine, obama. Ive pandered to it for years. Ive taken it for granted for years. Its mine by right, obama. And the obama is saying, its mine, clinton, who has a greater right to it . And notably, punk in the lower left says, who asked me . And punk says, youll be told later. So an amazingly harsh view about how democrats viewed the africanamerican vote as something that we fight over. And its a monolithic thing and someone owns it. The context for the cartoon is barack obama ran to become president but he was not necessarily seen as the africanamerican candidate. When he started the race, he ran as a post racial candidate. He didnt talk about race. The clintons had this amazingly goodwill among africanamericans from bill clintons time in office. So it wasnt really until barack obama starting winning races with the iowa caucuses, that the africanamerican vote came to him and then it became a very Political Part of this political base. But at this point, it was really kind of a coin toss as to who would be able to win this critical voting bloc. And, yeah. The only thing i would add this is exactly what republicans thought was going on at the time. And that whole perfectly captured sort of sense of entitlement that seemed to pervade mrs. Clinton for many years. I think its very funny, from the other side of the aisle, i think its very funny. At this time, very, very early in the battle for the 2008 democratic nomination which was a year and a half yet to be decided, there was sort of uncertainty about obama, among many africanamericans. Not so much about him per se. Although he was a relatively new figure on the national stage. But rather, could an africanamerican be elected president in the United States of america. And obama, as chris pointed out, did not run as Jesse Jackson had run, for example. As essentially the candidate of black america. Obama ran in a more transcendent way but what validated him among many black voters and you see this reflected in the polling over the month is when he won the iowa caucuses. Because the message to africanamerican voters in states like South Carolina in the democratic party, they constituted a majority was white people will vote for this guy. He could actually win. And that, i think had a lot to do with him winning this sort of tugofwar with Hillary Clinton for the black vote. And then going on and getting the democratic nomination. And of course, being elected and reelected as president. So this one, its dated 2008 but im going to say april because i know when the pennsylvania primary was, which was april 2008. In the upper left it says Pennsylvania Hill instructs barack on being a regular guy. Its kind of hard to see the detail. Shes wearing low riding gene, a tattoo on her arm. Shes saying take the shot, dont raise the pinky, its elyte elitist. Hes saying not to mention dangerous. The funny part of this cartoon. Yes, this is barack obama. Im not going to dispute the characterization. Hes not the person you hang out at the neighborhood bar with. Hillary clinton, you recall as her time as first lady she was sort of seen as out of touch. Obviously when she ran for president in 2016 she was seen as not the choice of working class voters. At this particular point in the 2008 primary, barack obama was winning suburban voters, young people, not White Working Class voters that ended up in the end prolonged this primary contest. We went all the way until virtually the last president ial primary. After those initial victories obama won, he lost a huge number of states in the midwest. The irony, this particular moment of hillarys campaign, she was seen as champion of the White Working Class voter. This looks like harvard and Yale Law School at the bar trying to figure out how to drink a beer. And it just made me laugh. The guy with the hairy back and the pants falling down. The whole thing makes me laugh and hits a nerve of what people perceive those two, as both elitist, telling one another how to drink a beer. And there are offhand comments that i think often stick with candidates for president. So basket of deplorables, the 47 , thinking back to mitt romney in 2012 and it was about this time, wasnt it, chris, that obama, i think, trying to explain in sort of a clinical analytical way why it is is a so many White Working Class people were drawn to his opponent and to, in some cases, the republicans when he talked about they claim in their desperation, they cling to their guns, they cling to religion. And dont know how what the context was for speaking that or how it came out. But it became sort of, see, this is what he really thinks about the kind of people who were in this bar. I would also say at this point in the Campaign Somebody had the bright idea to send barack obama bowling. I think he bowled like a 47, so you could clearly tell he was not a bowler either. It again goes back to mike dukakis, dont put your candidate in situations they are not comfortable in. There was a time in the 1980 primaries that candidate bush went bowling. Back in the late 70s, bhoeowli shoes had different soles on them, so that you could slide with one foot and put the brakes on with the other. The secret service didnt know that he was lefthanded and leftfooted, so they gave him a regular pair of shoes and he went flying as soon as he threw the ball and ends up on a heap in the Bowling Alley and he jumped up and said, nobody said this is going to be easy and nobody was right. I love that quote. Well go to the last one. So this is obviously a big statue head of barack obama. The masses are chanting obama, hes come to save us all. Please, please save us, all hail barack obama, oh, great messiah, or punk or donkey on the left is saying, all else ive got carrie or, ugh, hillary and so im guessing this is probably 2008. Again, this is the last one and this is a good one to end on because i think you could probably do the same cartoon now about how democrats feel about barack obama. Theyve idolized him, and they had a great expectation at the time, probably outsized, unrealistic expectations. I think this also plays on the critique of obama as a celebrity. This was a constant theme that came up earlier in the 2008 campaign, youll remember sarah palin mocked him for that hopi changey thing. The very First Campaign that john mccain ran against barack obama was titled celebrity. And obama, when he accepted his nomination in denver, he did it with these giant greek columns behind him that made him look almost godlike. So this is fairly mocking, probably that the passionate way that a lot of democrats look at obama and probably unfairly the lionization of obama. I do want to note, among the different ways you could have portrayed obama on the pedestal, notice the use of the Easter Island statue motif. It does evoke that sense of pagans worshipping the idol. Of course, the pagans are going to be in a vanished civilization. Actually looking at this now, in 2019, you wonder if this civilization has vanished and is being reborn on some other island in some other form. I look at this photo, and the Easter Island imagery to me suggested there was some mystery. We dont know what the Eastern Island figures were about, and a lot of people were having a hard time understanding what does barack obama mean . What does it mean that we elected somebody president unlike anybody weve ever elected before. Is he some magical figure . Is he some godlike figure . And another way of looking at the crowd that is beneath him is that in effect thats the body politic, like to the extent that this head has a body, it is the people who have somehow folded their own identities into his. And i think it captures something, if you think back to november of 2008 and the months that followed, i think it captured something of the sense of hope, of not knowing how high obama could lead us and naturally, as happened with all president s, but maybe in his case an exaggerated degree, the ensuing disappointment when you realize hes very smart but hes a mortal man. I thought this was astonishing cartoon. Yeah. And it is the last of our astonishing cartoons. And you all have been wonderful to bear with us through all of this. Lets thank our panel. [ applause ] and please before we leave, another compression of gratitude toward pat oliphant, who is here in the audience. [ applause ] [ applause ] coming up, a couple of events featuring former first Lady Michelle obama. We begin in a moment with our cspan series about influence and image of first ladies. Historians discuss Michelle Obamas family life, education, and her role as part of the first black president ial couple. Then Michelle Obama on her autobiography becoming written after she and her husband left the white house. She also talks about her time as a first lady, all ahead here on cspan3. If you enjoyed watching first ladies, pick up a copy of the book first ladies, influence and image, featuring profiles of the nations first ladies through interviews with top historians. Now available in paper back, hard cover, or as an ebook. Tonight on American History tv, our series landmark cases produced in cooperation with the National Constitution center, we explore the issues, people, and places involved in some of the most Significant Supreme Court cases in our nations history. At 8 00 eastern, we begin with the 1803 case, marbury versus madison, establishing the basis for judicial review in which federal courts have power to invalidate acts of other branches of government when they violate the constitution. Then at 9 30 scott versus sandford. A case that declared dred scott and other black people couldnt be u. S. Citizens and congress lacked authority to prohibit slavery in u. S. Territories. Watch on cspan3 and any time at cspan. Org. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on
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