Category Archives: Government
White House Safe House
Accidental President
I got the idea of a the White House as a safe house from a Holman Jenkins column in the WSJ. He doesn’t think Trump expected to win.
Winning was his colossal if propitious miscalculation. Nobody would care about Stormy Daniels if he weren’t president. His decades-long pursuit of a Trump Tower in Moscow would be a non-story…
Unfortunately, it will also occur to Mr. Trump now that his best move is to cling to the White House at all costs. That’s because under Justice Department guidelines he can expect not to be indicted as long as he remains in office.
Real Oval Office Guests
Public Political Bickering
Pelosi and Schumer visited Trump and Pence in the Oval Office. At least I think Pence was visiting. He was plastered silent and motionless into a chair.
After the photo-op no one shooed the press away. So they stayed. This was more transparency than Nancy could bear and she kept asking them to leave. But they stayed anyway and recorded the four – okay, three – of them bickering about five billion dollars for the Mexican wall.
No one asked the Mexicans to cough up the cash, but the president said he would be proud to shut down the government until he gets the money from Congress.
Republican Senators later did some public political bickering of their own and backed away from Trump’s threat, but The Donald got the last word.
Poppy Socks
Bush Funeral All About Humility
Click on someone humble to enlarge the image.
The funeral for President George H. W. Bush was beautiful, and informative. W’s eulogy was touching.
I drew Bush 41 a lot, and felt like I understood him pretty well as a goofy but decent guy. And I was aware of of his other virtues like integrity, kindness, courage, high speed golfing and fishing, airplane jumping and lip reading. But hearing the speakers, all of whom were close to him and loved him, one virtue seemed to stand out – humility. Maybe that’s because it’s a rare commodity these days, especially in Washington. Anyway, former Senator Alan Simpson nailed it in his warm and witty eulogy:
Those who crave the high road of humility in Washington , DC are not bothered by heavy traffic.
Then the camera panned to President Trump and the past presidents the front row and, well, this cartoon idea kind of jumped out.
It’s not often you get a pack of presidents together in one shot. So I try to make the most of it. Here’s a cartoon I drew when they gathered for Nixon’s funeral.
Click a president to enlarge the image.
Maybe I’ll do the Bush bunch pondering, “If Perot hadn’t run…”
I know. I left Jimmy Carter out of the humility cartoon. It’s not the first time.
Click a football helmet or the lump on President Ford’s head to enlarge the image.
Poppy in Cartoons, R.I.P.
Our 41st president George H.W. Bush died over the weekend. And the media has been heaping praise on him ever since. He was a man of great virtue. And the fact that his virtues – he was a genuine war hero with modesty, honesty and compassion – fit a narrative in sharp contrast to our 45th president may have something to do with it.
Here are some Bush 41 cartoons, along with text, from my book The Recent History of the United States in Political Cartoons, A Look Bok:
Click to enlarge.
Bush sought the Republican nomination for the 1988 presidential election and found it difficult to gain attention and traction while serving as vice president to the spotlight-savvy Reagan.
Click to enlarge.
George Herbert Walker Bush had run against Reagan for the 1980 Republican nomination. Reagan’s platform was for increased military spending and tax cuts. Reagan subscribed to a theory called “supply-side economics,” illustrated by the Laffer Curve, cooked up by economist Arthur Laffer. He predicted the tax cuts would cause so much new economic activity that tax revenues would increase enough to replace the money lost though tax cuts. During the campaign Bush called it voodoo economics. When the vanquished primary candidate Bush later became Reagan’s vp, many true believers questioned his conversion.
Click to enlarge.
The wimp factor was really a creation of the press.
Click to enlarge.
Budget Director Richard Darman fretted quite a bit about balancing the budget – especially in light of President Bush’s understated campaign pledge: “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Eventually Darman convinced Bush to raise taxes, sealing his fate, if not his lips, as a one-term president.
