In this room in one sense by the presence of pat oliphant. So please greet pat. But even more by the work of pat which yowull see on the screen. The culture he reptde esreprese highly specific. Daily perspective over the course of more than 60 years as a cartoonist, producing more than 10,000 individual cartoons, five days a week for the denver post, for several years, for the washington star for several years, and then along the way, pat oliphant became the first 20th century cartoonist to work independently of any newspaper. Thats how popular his work was, and it was syndicated through newspapers all across the country, out of his studio. So a specific daily comments on events as they were occurring, far from being balanced, they were opinion atded. That was part of their virtue. And obviously, not so much in words, although there are words, but especially in pictures and the work of the art of pat oliphant not just confined to cartoons but also to paintings and sculpture. Before i introduce our panel, let me speak some words of thanks on behalf of those who were instrumental in helping this program to come about. Beth turner and Molly Schwartz brg, cocurators of olphant unpacking the archive, and please take time to visit the exhibit at the special collections library. Thanks to the entire staff of the albert and shirley small special collections library. For all their hard work, not only processing and preserving the collection but also preparing for this amazing exhibition. Thanks to john unsple worth, the dean of the libraries and University Librarian who has led the universitys oliphant effort throughout, and finally, susan conway and Patrick Oliphant for donating their extraordinary collection to the university and making this event possible. Im going to introduce the panel now and tell you just a little bit about how were going to proceed from now until the end of our first session, and the second session will follow the same format. Kent germany, im introducing these in the order to which theyre sitting on your right. And by the way, these introductions are going to be insultingly brief. You can read more about thesis individuals in your programs and certainly you can go to the website and learn even more about them. But kent germany, a senior fellow with the Miller Center who worked extensively on the john f. Kennedy and lyndon b. Johnson recordings as part of the president ial recordings project at the Miller Center. Ken hughes also with the Miller Center, who worked extensively and famously in some ways on the lbj and especially the Richard Nixon recording project. Chester pach, a historian whose research, interests, and product has encompassed johnson and Ronald Reagan. And robert strong. Bob strong, who was assistant director when the Miller Center was conducting its jimmy carter oral histories. Im mike nelson. I have an affiliation with the Miller Center, but my day job is at Rhodes College in memphis, tennessee. And our format is going to be essentially this, there are no prepared presentations, no prepared remarks. Were going to be flashing over the course of this session 15 cartoons, just a tiny curated but tiny slice of what we could do and probably should do if we were old enough in time. Theyll unfold chronologically from the Johnson Administration through the reagan administration, and then basically, im going to throw the floor open to brief comments from these panelists. Their perspective on what theyre seeing and how that relates to what they knew about and now know about what was going on in these administrations at the time. So if we could have that first cartoon. All right, have at it. Im going to start by saying this stymied three of the four panelists, so a little bit of background. This is 1966, Lyndon Johnson has just undergone surgery. Hes getting sort of teasing reviews from the press because he refuses to convoles. He had gotten a polyp removed in his throat and had a hernia operated on. And it seems the anesthetic wore off, he started calling cabinet secretaries and white house aides and invited the reporters in to observe him recovering. So his doctors had said, you know, for two or three weeks you are not allowed to drive. Most president s just donttrive because they dont have to, but johnson liked driving around his ranch in johnson city, but johnson being johnson decided that four days out of the surgery, he would drive around the lbj ranch in johnson city. And so this cartoon is making fun of him, and i think theres one reference most of us will get. So thinking of lindyndon jo n johnson, he loved the newspaper. He loved seeing things about him in the newspaper, maybe not everything he saw he liked, but he liked to be the center of attention. And if you look at the various things in this cartoon, its a little snapshot of Lyndon Johnson and the white house recordings, theres a lot of johnson in this cartoon that shows up in those recordings. He loved to stand on cars. He likes to get bullhorns and stand on cars and do his politicking that way. He liked bulls. And if you know anything about john, hes got a lot of bull stories. About different body parts on bulls and how those compare to human being body parts and other things. And to cows quivering in pastures waiting for bulls and that sort of thing. This is a perfect johnson cartoon. My daughter is here. Shes an 18yearold high school senior. Im not sure she would know who popeye is, but i think most of the rest of us would know who popeye is. Popeye might make a comeback eating spinach and doing cross fit so maybe theres a chance with this cartoon. I didnt have trouble imagining Lyndon Johnson as popeye. I kept thinking about lady bird as oliveoil, and that didnt seem to work quite as well. And the notion that he would recover quickly and then do damage seems to fit. I would just think about the timing. This is late 1966. Imagine the depiction of johnson only six or eight months later, would he look so forceful given that the war in vietnam had deteriorating considerably . This represents johnson as a powerful figure. I imagine its something of a zenith or at least it would be a decline afterwards. The other thing that struck me in relation to the convolessance, johnson was a notably private man. I have heard from journalists how he would take them into the bathroom as he answered their questions. Even, he took an afternoon nap, and he would shepherd them into the bedroom and change into his pajamas. So he did that in the hospital. He did that overall, and so in some ways, that reflected the johnson permesonality. Its not in the cartoon, but its certainly in the convalescence. Im going to invoke popeye, not only prespinach but postspinach where we see him here. And although this cartoon is from 1966, ill never forget reading something by david greene brg, a historian at rutgers describing johnson on the day of kennedys assassination. Johnson up until that time had been a very unhappy Vice President. He had let himself go physically and in other ways. And greenbrg said once he got the word he would be president , he was like popeye after he ate a can of spipch. Occasionally, that seemed appropriate. For i think we need to say a Little Something about Hubert Humphrey, who you might not see, but hes the little baby crawling there. Asking about tapioca and barbecue spinach, so lets think a little bit about hubert. One thing, in terms of johnsons surgeries, Hubert Humphreys son had had cancer two years before that, so this was a major moment in the humphrey familys life. I wanted to put that out there because in a few minutes, well see hubert in some different forms mr. Oliphant created. Lets move to the next one. I guess im the white house takes guy. Ill take this one. This is a pretty good depiction of Lyndon Johnsons life. He was constantly on the phone. You could go through this daily diary and see how many things he talked about and things he talked about and talked about them with a level of expertise that is dazzling. And he would get upset with people taking up his time. Theres an early conversation where johnson is talking about all of these appointments he has to do as president when hes trying to think, so johnson spins his life, he breaks his life into two days, professor pach was talking about, he takes a nap during the middle of the day. Somehow, johnson was able to ingest enough calories to handle all of these crises. This is from 1967. If you remember the detroit riots and johnson makes the decision to send in the army into detroit. So thats part of the context of whats going on here. And just a take off that. Were all familiar about thinking about Franklin Roosevelt as the master of radio, kennedy the first president who masters television. Trump is the first master of whatever it is twitter is. Lyndon johnson is the master of the telephone. Now, thats a private form of communication, not a public one, but in washington, everything leaks so its a semipublic form of communication. And it really is a helpful tool for thinking about his presidency, to imagine those conversations and because of the work the Miller Center has done, listen to a number of them. When you spend time listening to johnson on the phone, you know a lot about what kind of president he was. Can i piggyback on that and thank the Miller Center . I teach at ohio university. I usually teach class on tuesday. Im not. What are my students doing today . They have an assignment where they have to listen to three of johnsons telephone tapes that are on the Miller Center site. One where he speaks to Jackie Kennedy ten days after the assassination. One to Richard Russell where he bludgeons him into serving on the warren commission, and one, the infamous one in which he orders hager pants from the hager pants company. They compare the public and the private johnson, and the two are just light years apart. Even on the phone, he can have very different personalities. And just in terms of the circumstances of that detroit riot, this was in the summer of 1967. Johnson at this time, i think, was still expecting to run for president again in 1968. His main rival for the republican nomination, it appeared at that time, was going to be governor George Romney of michigan. And when the riots took place in michigan, a subtext, maybe contributing to some of why it turned out to be so complicated, was that romney didnt want to say he couldnt handle this situation. And therefore needed federal troops. And johnson insisted that romney say he couldnt handle the situation, so even in the midst of a catastrophic set of events that resulted in dozens of deaths, hundreds of millions of dollars in destroyed property, you could not take that sort of political component out of it as two individuals who thought they might well be running against each other the following year wanting to make this situation reflect bad on the other one rather than on themself. Before we move off this, i want to point out some of the artistry in how johnson gets presented, and johnson had very large parts of his body he imposed on other people. You think about the johnson treatment. The way mr. Oliphant has presented his nose here. Theres this growing nose johnson has in many of these political cartoons. If you Pay Attention to johnsons body shape, the one well look at after this is a distinctly different version of johnson. Not this one but the next one well look at. Lets move on. Thats baby hubert. And hes running for president. And so johnson, i cant tell if those are flies coming off johnsons feet, but the ranch obviously is an important part of Lyndon Johnsons life. He love today go and look at the deer and look at the river, and he went to great length to acquire hundreds and hundreds of acres of property around him, so this was Lyndon Johnsons favorite place to be, and youve got Hubert Humphrey there wearing his boots, which look like ladys boots. They have a very high heel to them. Theyre not texas boots, so hubert is wearing kind of a feminized boot here. But johnson with his bad socks, and hes skinny. Most images of johnson are not him being skinny, but i think that reflects this is toward the end of his presidency. He really was not that old. So one thing to think about Lyndon Johnson is that he died before he was eligible for medicare. So he is in his early 60s. So hes in his 50s during most of his presidency. He had had a heart attack in the mid1950s. He would have two more after his presidency. And so his body is deteriorating, but hes still relatively a young person here in this. And i love the image of the horse in the background. This is an image, i grew up a little bit in texas. And you know, people love horses and love drawings of horses on their wall. So when i saw that, i was immediately back into texas in the 1970s looking at somebodys house with a picture on the wall. This is a painfully accurate depiction of the relationship between Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. Johnson had chosen humphrey as his vieptd in 64 because he needed a liberal running made whose last name wasnt kennedy, and humphrey was the choice. It was, it seemed like the best move humphrey could make at the time. It was probably like the most deleterious one in the long run for his own president ial ambitions because he had to completely subordinate himself to Lyndon Johnson, especially on the vietnam war. This cartoon was done in the month of the Democratic National convention in chicago. When humphrey tried to get a peace plank in the platform, one that would call for a halt to American Bombing of North Vietnam. And return for negotiation or as a gesture to get negotiations started to end the war. Johnson threatened to denounce humphrey as jeopardizing the lives of american soldiers if he came out for a bombing halt. So while humphrey was becoming the leader of the party, he was still very, very much under johnsons control. And i think this captures this almost cruelly. I belong to the generation that was in college when all of this was going on. I cant read i feel a draft the way it was intended. If it was supposed to be about johnson being drafted for the nomination, i cant see that word without thinking something else. I think it reflects the contemporary perceptions of the Johnson Humphrey relationship, but i guess i want to push back a little bit and say i think its a tad unfair to Hubert Humphrey. I think humphrey really did try hard to carve out some independent space. The overwhelming personality of johnson made it very difficult. But just to see humphrey as the child in the adult boots, i think, diminishes humphreys stature even in the shadow of johnson. I just add this. Johnson wanted to be president for a very, very long time. But he came up in politics in texas at a time when being a senator from texas meant you were associated in the minds of your fellow senators but also in the minds of the national press, the American People, you were associated with the south. And no southerner had been nominated for president since Zachary Taylor in 1848, even Woodrow Wilson was governor of new jersey at the time despite his being a virginian. For johnson, it was very important therefore, he was going to move on to the National Stage as a president ial level politician to rebrand himself, no pun intended, as a westerner. And so this ranch was terribly important to his effort to carve out a new identity. He was inviting people from washington down there all the time so they would see him and associate him with the west, which had no political baggage attached to it. Rather than the south, which did. I love this cartoon. Moving on to the nixon campaign. This is right after Richard Nixon has announced as a republican candidate for president , that he will end the war and win the peace in vietnam. So he is rebranding himself as a dove after having supported every hawkish escalation of the war up until that point. And i think what this captures that the commentary at the time and for years afterwards didnt capture was just how impossible it would be for any of the candidates to come up with a satisfactory outcome in vietnam. Nixon was trying to avoid saying he was going to win the war because he knew he could not do that it would not be credible. And he really didnt have much of a plan for ending it or winning the peace, as well get into a little bit later. So the idea of him scrambling to sort of pull a rabbit out of a hat is perfect, i think. And i do want to draw everyones attention to the facial expression on the rabbit. Which i read as jaded, but others might take a different way. I found this one really curious. When i thought of the phrase tricky dick nixon, i never thought of a magician. I thought of someone who did other kinds of tricks. And the problem with Richard Nixon i had always assumed was not that he was an incompetent trickster but that he was way too good at it. Yeah, i guess my reaction was tricky dick, too. I study eisenhower, and i had known an awful lot about the Eisenhower Nixon relationship. Eisenhower always thought nixon was too partisan and also immature. And so nixon did try to rebrand himself when he ran that second time for president in 196768. There was the new nixon, the guy who was more mature, who could poke fun at himself. Some of you may remember seeing him during the campaign on laughin saying sock it to me . Only the new nixon could do that. What we got was another version of the trickster. This one in a magicians suit, but still, i think it calls back that image of nixon as the tricky dick. Ill be the nose guy and point out Richard Nixon and his nose. And to tie in with johnson and tie it with some opinion polls that were done at the time, basically asked the survey respondents, do you trust the government to do the right thing in most cases . And so that number at the john kennedy Lyndon Johnson level is bumping up at about 80 . By the time we get through Richard Nixon, its dropping down well below the 50s and into the 20s. And so we see this precipitous drop. The noses in these cartoons are indicating in the American Public that the faith in the government, faith in the presidency, the sense that these authoritative leaders are lying to us, has become engrained in american culture. So its the political cartoonists thats let us know this ahead of time. We should listen more, i guess. Nixons great advantage when it came to the vietnam issue in 1968 was that he was able to say, im not this and im not that. Im not going to be the president who got us into a war and deeper and deeper into a war and now cant seem to find any way out of it, but im also not going to be one of those dovish politicians who as he would put it, cuts and runs. So i dont even know if nixon ever spoke the words secret plan, but in effect, what he was offering the voters is im not either one of those guys. Or either one of those sets of guys. And you cant you could do a lot worse than me. And a good bit of his rebranding of himself while he was Vice President and then in the runup to his revived candidacy in 1968 was to spend a lot of time touring the world. And establishing a kind of sort of general reputation as somebody who was deeply familiar with foreign affairs. So when he said in effect you can trust me to handle this, that resonated in some ways with a selection of voters who thought we cant do any worse than were doing, and this is a guy who seems to know his way around the world. And he was able to get away, in other words, with being very broad and general and nonspecific in a way that other candidates might not have been. Well, this is actually 1972. Now, you all will remember george wallace. The former governor of alabama who ran as an independent candidate in 1968, when nixon was a republican nominee and humphrey was the democratic nominee. And for a good bit of that campaign, it appeared that wallace might carry enough states to throw the election into the house of representatives, to deny both nixon and humphrey a majority. As it turned out, he did not, although he carried 45 electoral votes, which in a closer election might have done the trick. It would have thrown it into the house. But along the way, he got over 13 of the vote and established himself as a national figure. In 1972, is when he decided he was going to pursue his president ial ambitions by running as a democrat, which of course, was his party during his career in alabama. And so having won the florida primary here, you see him kissing his on again off again political girlfriend, the democratic donkey. I just cant keep thinking of this phrase he would say pseudo pseudointell pseudointellectual. George wallace was the kind of candidate that we use today say could not possibly be elected president of the united states. Until events deprived us of the opportunity. Its worth noting he didnt win just the florida primary. He won the michigan primary. Maryland, and tennessee. I had a similar thought. You could draw an updated version of this with donald trump kissing an elephant. But the difference would be you would also have to draw a cartoon of the elephant kissing him back. [ applause ] yeah, let me say a word about the donkey. You have to think about the context, too. The democratic south was starting to crumble, at least on president ial terms. There were south was moving southern voters, white southern voters were supporting republicans. And how the democrats would maintain strength in the south became a difficult question. And certainly, as much as the National Democratic party wanted to keep that base in the south, if the base meant wallace or wallacetype candidates, it was a very, very difficult relationship. Good thing jimmy carter came along. I was just going to make a note of the teeth, which will come up in just a second. This was a time when it was said that the Democratic Party that it was three georges wide. So george wallace, all the way at the right wing of the party. And then george meanie, remember george meanie, the head of the aflcio, at the center of the party, and George Mcgovern at the left end of the party. Wallace was clearly winning primaries in a way that frightened both of the other two wings of the parties. And of course, it was on a day that he won the maryland primary that he was shot in maryland. And with such disabling wounds that he had to end his candidacy there. Theres no chance at all he would have become the democratic nominee, and its hard to see how he could have made things worse for the democrats that year. They ended up losing every state but one when nixon ran for reelection. But he at least for a time kind of reminiscent of huey long in the mid1930s, although less permanently, his being forced off the National Scene probably changed things in ways that well never be able to fully understand. Another cartoon i love. This is from right before the 1972 president ial election. When a lot of the press coverage was about how Richard Nixon could not possibly get the settlement terms that he had demanded from the North Vietnamese. And nixon was able to surprise his critics by getting exactly those terms. Unfortunately, those terms were not peace with honor as nixon and his i want to say accomilous, but theres a different word, magicians assistant, Henry Kissinger, were able were presenting to the public. Nixon and kissinger, we now know from nixons white house tapes, got a decent interval deal with North Vietnam that would keep South Vietnam independent for a year or two after nixon withdrew the last american troops and tapes from this time show both nixon and kissinger realized their terms would doom the south, so they really didnt count as peace. Nonetheless, right before the 72 election, the north accepted those terms. Realizing they would lead eventually to a victory for the communists in vietnam. And kissinger famously went on television and announced that peace is at hand. So i think this picture more than the headlines at the time captured what was going on, which was a massive trick. In all of these, i try to imagine what would the subjects have thought of the drawing appearing in the newspaper. Im not sure nixon would have been bothered by this one. I think he might have thought, oh, yes, i am in fact pulling it out of the hat. Henry kissinger would not have liked it. Yeah, i thought about the Nixon Kissinger relationship where here nixon is the magician and Henry Kissinger is the invisible figure behind the nixon sign. How that changed over the course of a year really, very quickly, where kissinger became the magician. Kissinger became the guy who did all of these marvelous things that no one could imagine or kissinger became the essential figure of stability at a time when the nixon presidency was crumbling. So while kissinger is the magicians assistant here, he became the main act very quickly. One thing i want to point things toward is the value of Patrick Oliphants archive for us understanding this entire era, because we have right now today 15 cartoons that give us a really nice snapshot of this period in history. And what strikes me even as were talking here, as i would think about teaching students about the value of perspective and maybe were in a posttruth phase of American Life right now, i dont know if we are. But history is one of these things where everybody has their own opinion about it, and we use our evidence. And to be able to look through this lens of art and commentary thats represented in this archive, i think is really wonderful. Im just in the 20 minutes we have been up here begun to see something coming tloum patricks pen here that i hadnt seen before i came into this room, so you know, i dont have a hat on, but if i did, i would i dont know, is that a hat . I would tip it to you. So thank you. One of the criticisms sometimes you hear of cartoons is that they are didactic. They are telling you exactly, theyre planting one thought in your mind. Its interesting because when i saw this cartoon, i had a very different reading on it than my colleagues. Which i think may be an example that oliphant was a more subtle cartoonist than is the caricature of cartoonists or it may mean that i missed it, but to me, what it meant was nixon was the frontman. Kissinger was the one behind the scenes making things happen. Of course, that was an image that kissinger cultivated in his back channel conversations with reporters and other members of the washington community. But i wonder, did i just miss something there or could one read the cartoon that way as well as the way reading it in a more nixon centric way . You know, just right now after looking at it, it looks like nixon is being eaten. Like theres a monster that is just consuming him. Maybe its Richard Nixon consuming himself. I think kissinger thought of himself in exactly the way you described. But this cartoon presents him huddled underneath, handing the bird. Thats not exactly the portrait of power he would have wanted. Well, i yield to my betters here. We have another nixon cartoon, i think. At least one more. This is from right after nixons most famous and selfdestructive press conference, the i am not a crook press conference. Which needs no further introduction. As is another one that i love. Nixon had planned that press conference as kind of a, his truth offensive to fight back against the watergate hearings. This is late in 1973. So in the year since nixon won this incredibly great, huge reelection landslide. The Senate Watergate hearings had begun. Well, quite a few things had happened. And nixons image had been greatly tarnished. His Approval Ratings had gone from like in the high 60s to the 40s and sometimes dipping below into the 30s. And this was a great reference to one of the things that came out in the in the the watergate hearings which was the existence of Richard Nixons enemies list, which was one of the items of evidence that john dean producing in his blockbuster testimony in which the American People learned that their president actually kept a list of enemies that he wanted to use the federal government against. I was just thinking, isnt it nice to look back on a president in an age that was so innocent and so simple that the worst public concern was whether the president was a crook . Or with reagan, if he a dunce. I wish we were back in those innocent times. I want to pick up on whatnot kent said as well. Many of the names on the enemies list were on other lists he would compile were journalists. Those who were unfriendly. Nixons aides kept tally of those in the media who were friendly or unfriendly, tv, print, and would try to use the power of the presidency to exclude them from news handouts, from news conferences, time and time again, he would say he didnt want a reporter from the New York Times allowed into the white house again. And the aides would kind of nod and say, yes, mr. President , and then usually not carry out those orders. But there really was a tension between nixon and the news media that began in 1969 when he became president and only intensified because of vietnam and watergate. Just real quickly. I think theres an important lesson about the presidency that we often forget. President s are always in front of us. And they are always putting up a front. How do you know what the real Richard Nixon is . Or the real donald trump or the real fill in the blank. Its a real problem, and a problem for scholars, and one of the things i learned in my affiliation with the Miller Center over the years and conducting these extensive oral history interviews is how often the public image that has captured everyones attention is wrong. And how important it is to puncture whatever that reputation is. Richard nixon famously reinvented himself for the 1968 campaign. And its beginning to come apart here. We need to constantly be on the alert that were not fooled by the many images we see. I agree. I would add one other thing. And that is, look at all those reporters. I mean, can you remember a time when president s felt like they had no choice but to hold press conferences on a regular basis . Even at times when it was politically inconvenient for them, can you remember a time when we all watched those press conferences because we only got three channels sxrk they were broadcast live on all three at the same time. So in some ways this cartoon speaks to an earlier era in the way in which the media and the public are able to see the president as well as commenting on the particular circumstances of that very memorable press conference. By the way, isnt it interesting that at that time, nixons response when people accused him of having done things wrong was to try to cover them up. In other words, he bought the premise that if a president has done the things of which hes accused of doing, and it comes out, hell lose his office. And i dont know that thats the current governing situation in the white house today where denying something flat out or saying, even if i did it, it doesnt matter, theres nothing wrong with it, is a very different kind of response to serious accusations. Were ready for i think our last nixon cartoon is coming up. You recognize Archibald Cox there on the left side of the screen. Chin to nose with president nixon. Okay. Yeah. You all know what this is. Its right after the existence of the secret white house tapes that nixon recorded came out during the Senate Watergate hearings. A lot of people were shocked that the president secretly recorded his conversations, an aide to john f. Kennedy said john f. Kennedy would have never done that, and a day later, it came out that john f. Kennedy had done it as well, as well as johnson andizer hower and president s go back to fdr. The difference was that in nixons case, those tapes immediately became criminal evidence. So the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, wanted to subpoena them. And did. And nixon fought that subpoena tooth and nail to the extent of firing cox. But this brings us right down to the moment before that, which to me is kind of a western showdown. And i do love the caption, eyeball to eyeball, sort of. Kind of pointing out nixons habitual shifty eyedness. Im guessing the devil at the bottom is not Archibald Cox. Just a guess. The reference seems to me, even if it wasnt intended, it summons up the cuban missile crisis, the eyeball to eyeball reference of kennedy and cruschaaf, so in that, it elevates a domestic conflict to the level of the international confrontation, and one could read into it perhaps intention that the integrity of the public is almost as risk in the same way it was in the cuban missile crisis, although in very different ways, but the analogy i think is very interesting and worth thinking about. Yeah, this is a kennedy washington and a Nixon Washington eyeball to eyeball, too. This is one thing that really strikes me. And it also looks like nixon, hes holding a tape, but it looks like a discus. You know, like a weapon. Hes about to hurl. Again, all these cartoons were published in a daily newspaper. And meant to comment on the daily news. But am i alone in seeing this cartoon bring back a whole era, a summer when we heard john dean, who had been the white House Counsel for Richard Nixon, testify under oath to incriminating conversations that he had been a part of with the president in the oval office and of course, having his testimony discredited, and then one day we learn that, my god, there are actual audiotape recordings of these very conversations that are in dispute. And who would have imagined that a president would install a voice activated automatically turned on, in other words, once anybody in the room started talking, recording system, but Richard Nixon had done that, and we found out about it one day. And so the question at that point became, well, we can settle this. Whos telling the truth . Lets go to the tape. And it was, of course, a matter of time, i think, before assuming nixon didnt burn the tapes, which some thought he should do at the time and others thought he should have done looking back on it. But what an extraordinary thing that this would then become evidence in a criminal case and then known to the public and now available for our ears. Well, lets say goodbye to Richard Nixon for the duration of this time and turn to his successor, his appointed Vice President. We skipped over spirue agnew and the consequences of his resignation and the coming of the 25th amendment which for the first time provided for the appointment of a new Vice President when the vice presidency became vacant, and it turned out to be gerald ford, who at the time was the republican minority leader in the house of representatives. Had been an established figure in washington for a quarter of a century. And i wonder, as you look at this, this is a cartoon of president ford, but i wonder, was ford nixons first choice to be his Vice President . And if so, or if not, what did he hope he would accomplish by appointing ford to that office instead of someone else . Ford was easy to get appointed. I know that nixon really wanted, thought that the best person to succeed him would be john connally, who was a democrat who was closely associated with Lyndon Johnson. But who was very conservative and had joined nixon as his treasury secretary in hifirst term and then ran democrats for nixon, but apparently, there was no way to get a democratic turncoat through a democratic congress. Were there any other candidates he thought of before ford . Ford is just the easiest to get appointed. But nixon was kind of dreading the fact that ford was kind of a popular replacement for him, because he thought as long as spirue agnew was Vice President , they couldnt impeach him because agnew would be in charge, but with ford, they had somebody whom a lot of people could accept in the role. Lyndon johnson made fun of ford extensively when ford was a Republican House member. Particularly about him hitting his head too many times playing football. And so lbj started the cte trend before it was a thing in the nfl. But i would like to say a word about the bandaid on his forehead. The image that became attached to gerald ford was clumsy, falling down, bumping into things. It was partly because chevy chase couldnt do a proper impression of him. But was very good at falling down. And it is one of those images thats just a little bit false. Gerald ford got a football scholarship to the university of michigan. That is a nontrivial athletic accomplishment. And in his adult life was actually quite an accomplished athlete in a variety of sports. The clumsiness got attached to him not because it was true about him as a person, but because it was metaphorically correct. Hes this awkward he is this awkward president , not elected, appointed. Who succeeds the only president who ever resigned from office. Has to navigate the period following that disgrace. And it is a period full of bumps, mistakes and errors. The clumsy ford stuck. But its not altogether the accurate picture of who he was. Yeah, i would endorse that. And it became the way, though, of criticizing his competence to be president. The falling down was an indirect way of doing that. Think of the debate where he said under his presidency there would be no soviet control of eastern europe, and the moderator looked at him and are you sure you want to say that and he doubled down on it. So it was the the stumbles were visible. But there was a real doubt that ford was up to the challenges of the office. Thats one reason that Ronald Reagan challenged him in 1976 for the republican nomination. And if we think of like sharks in the water and gerald ford making himself available to comediennes to make fun of, its also that television has become a much different thing bit time and watergate makes television a much different thing. So seeing the loss of faith in the presidency, having this person come in and then pardon Richard Nixon, he opened himself up to that at a time when there was money to be made by really making fun of president s. The veil sort of comes off for comedians to make fun of politicians in a way that it hadnt been before watergate. Just one thing about ford, he was the first Vice President in history who was elected neither president nor Vice President. He became president through this new process in the constitution. The significance of that, i think, is prior to becoming Vice President and and in not too long a while president , was that the largest constituency in which he had ever had to run for office was a Congressional District in michigan, a rock solid republican Congressional District in michigan. So to translate that kind of experience in mass politics into the presidency, especially at a time when in the aftermath of nixon, people were looking to the presidency for some sense of reassurance, some sense that things are going to be okay, he was in an extraordinarily difficult situation. And on top of that, not that many years before he became president , the Political Parties had opened up their process for choosing their nominees for president. Which meant that in 1976 the door was much wider than it had ever been for Ronald Reagan or some other challenger to come and take him on. Ronald reagan had been elected governor of california two times. He had been on a much larger stage. He had been a movie star for years. He knew how to relate to mass public in a way that i dont think ford ever had a chance to learn. But this gives us a chance to move onto the reagan presidency im sorry, the carter presidency and then the reagan presidency. Sorry. Well, the first thing you notice is that carters teeth are larger than the donkeys teeth. Thats saying a lot. Jimmy rlt carter must have been a problem for political cartoonists. Normally when you run for president of the united states, they draw you through the years, from your senate career, the various things youve done in the public arena. He does come from almost out of nowhere, and then there was some issue, i presume, among cartoonists about how he was properly drawn. Some of them drew his body as a peanut. And actually the goode people of plains, georgia, erected a 15foothigh peanut with this grin on it in order to hopefully stop passing by cars and have them visit plains and the handful of gift shops that were there. Later they came up with a different innovation. They put in a traffic light. So, carters new to the scene. And this, however, is an iconic scene for every president. After youve been elected, you suddenly have things to deal with and they turn out to be exextremely hard. Kennedy was asked at the end of his first year in the white house, what surprised you the most . And he said, all the bad things i said about the problems in washington during the campaign turned out to be true. It is, in fact, a daunting challenge. Maybe even more daunting for the candidate without any national experience. And just to pick up on that and go beyond, it seems to me it raises a fundamental question that historians study and debate now, and contemporaries talk about, how much of the failings of the carter presidency really can be attributed to jimmy carter, his inexperience, his ineffectiveness, and how much has to do with all the issues and problems that are represented in the cartoon . It seems as if he comes into the Office Facing extraordinary challenges. So theres more to the story than just is carter prepared and is carter up to the task . I think about carter coming out of inauguration, south georgia, hes a nuclear engineer, a naval officer and he had the sense that tease coming out of nowhere and coming into office. So i think theres a freshness postwatergate, maybe theres this baptist guy from south george that can bring something fresh and new. What i find interesting about this cartoon historically, which i wouldnt have thought this earlier in my life, is these are in the form of books. So, hes getting this stuff in the form of written material that hes going to be sitting down and going through. Maybe part of that is reflecting that jimmy carter has a more intellectual background. Lyndon johnson didnt read books. Some president s read books, some dont read books. Some president s write letters to their moms, some president s have aides write letters to their mom. So this to me has a freshness to it and we may not go back to having all of these things in one place again. I guess theres one democratic candidate that says she has a plan for that. Shes got a library full of plans she can look to and pull things off. But it is an incredibly difficult job, you know, if we think back to some of the cartoons with lbj in it and how much time it took and how you had to be an expert in so many Different Things or have experts in your white house providing you a foundation of knowledge from which to operation, both in the domestic sphere and in the Foreign Policy sphere. Now we sort of dont really think about that expertise that lies behind the presidency, that professionalism that is there. Its telling to look back at the coverage jimmy carter got in 1976 as an outsider. I remember seeing a Barbara Walters special in which she described him as unusually sexy for a president ial candidate. And kennedy asked in his charisma, that wouldnt last. And the hair captures it . Thats a good point. The virtues of having these snapshots is that they remind us is that whatever our lasting image of jimmy carter is as not smiling as burdened, overburdened by all the challenges of the office, and especially the chal enss of those times is that we forget the extraordinary sense of optimism and new energy that accompanied his election. Doonsbury had a running character in the first few months of the administration. The secretary of symbolism, the suggestion being that carter was so good of mastering the symbols of office. In order to win support. Thats how high he was riding at the time. But as ken pointed out his election as president marks a transition. We had been electing washington figures president ever since world war ii. And with 1976, the fact that he had never been in washington, which he reminded us of as a candidate, turned out to be a political virtue. He was from georgia. He had actually done things and was going to bring that sense of fresh blood and fresh spirit into the augian stables of washington, d. C. And that marks a kind of historic turning point at which governor, and in the most recent election, complete outsider, began to become a more appealing political persona for those who were running for president. Real quick. The other way cartoonists responded to the Carter Administration is by drawing things about his southern and rural heritage. There was a famous cartoon of a white house limousine outside the white house on cinder blocks. There was another jodi powell, his press secretary, came into the Office One Day and asked his staff, theres a cartoon of the white house with a tire swing right in front of the door. What is this . Why is that funny . And his staff explained to him, well, people dont really put tire swings in their front yard. Jody powell said he went home that night and took down the tire swing. That he had put in his suburban Virginia Home and his kids were very upset. Ah, this one. One question you might ask, whose stuff would be more upset, kennedys or carters . Its kind of a tossup. Hamilton jurdon, who was the brilliant political adviser to jimmy carter, said, we lost the election in 1980 for three reasons bad economy, the iran hostage crisis and ted kennedy. If we had been able to fix one of those three, we would have stood a chance, but with the three of them against us, we did not. This is a cartoon that says, carter really doesnt beat kennedy in the primary season. He just comes equipped for the car crash. I had never seen this before. I looked long and hard at it. Ten years after chap qupaqitic. There are some retrospective Television Shows and movies that bring our cultural understandings to something that happened in very different circumstances. I once went to chappaquittic to see the dike bridge and, believe me, ive reached my own fault as to who was at fault. I read this much more critical of kennedy other than carter. Maybe carters white house staff wouldnt have been too president with the president in the backseat and prepared to swim for his survival but it seems to me that kennedy is driving and hes driving the carter presidency over the edge or into the deep. And it reflects some of the thinking at the time but i think some of that criticism was muted just because it was a kennedy. And it also reflects the struggle between a liberal and moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Not that any of us have ever heard of anything like that. This is one of many, many cartoons that pat oliphant drew during the election and cumulative they sent a range of messages. I think if this was the only cart toon you had from 1980, this was the only one you saw, you might write a caption vote republican because look at the two alternatives whom the democrats were offering there. A lot of people did, they voted republican. And ill just very quickly point out, the presence of a kennedy washington, right . I mean, this is a theme that comes through some of oliphants cartoons here, but this is something that we cant i mean, it seems obvious to us, the stories, but the power of that moment in the early 1960s that john kennedy helped set down and then his brothers continued forward here. I see this car moving forward and its still the kennedys driving. Its definitely the chappaqiitic issue but its also politicians as celebrity as part of the american politics in 1980s when we get people voting republican that started his career as celebrity. One last tiny point. Even though carter is the president of the united states, a kennedy is at the wheel. Another wheel. Thanks. Go ahead. I guess ill take it. I think this one is brilliant, frankly. I think why do i think so . Because it captures some of the dimensions of what people call malaise in 1980, 1981. I know there are some people in the room who can think back and remember exactly how that felt. Remember the misery index, which is the combination of the rate of unemployment and the rate of inflation. Around 20 or 21 at the time of the 1980 election. Jimmy carter was widely blamed for chronic economic problems that predated his presidency for the hostage crisis, for lots of other things going wrong, and for people thinking that there was no reason to be confident about the future. Now, Ronald Reagan said during the campaign, our best days are ahead of us. But it sure doesnt look like thats the kind of captaincy he is prepared to provide the ship. He looks like hes ready to go down with the ship. Theres kind of an ominous look on that prune face. Are i think its really good as providing that anxiety at the time reagan became president. And in some ways it previews what occurred. Yes, there were reagan economic reforms, but then there was the worst recession since the great depression. Unemployment got up to almost 11 at the end of 1982. But reagan also was active. Reagan did take the initiative in trying to bring about fundamental changes. One could argue that that first year of the reagan presidency is the most active year of reagans term two terms in washington. So, the captain was going to do more than just sort of stand there. He was going to do something to save the ship. A lot of people looking back at the end of the reagan presidency would say, in fact, he had been rather successful in doing it. Perfect capturing the moment. That is just what it looked like. And it was lake okay Ronald Reagan youve got the job. Good luck. You know, i said at the i said at the beginning weve got two cultures here. Weve got the longterm view of scholars. And weve got the great daytoday commentary of great cartoonists. Just as this cartoon conveys the idea that Ronald Reagan is going to be taking over a sinking ship, that the job is too big to be done, that was the dominant view among president ial scholars at this time. When Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, he was the sixth president to take the office in the last 20 years. Kennedy, who was assassinated, lbj who was elected to one term but then had to drop out of the next election. Nixon who was elected twice and then forced out of office through the impeachment process. Gerald ford, who was unable to get elected to a full term. Jimmy carter would only serve one term. There was a wide sense among scholars of the presidency at this time that the office has just become too big for any individual to fulfill it. And then as chester pointed out, 1981 tushd out to be an extraordinary year of president ial leadership. And since then we have only had one president who didnt serve a full two terms, at least so far. And to reagan, i think, managed to confound the pessimists of all kinds with the presidency that followed. I find this one haunting. In a good way. Like charles dings a christmas carol, subtle but as powerful. I think it was hard for cartoonists to caricature Ronald Reagan, but one trait of his that this brings out was what many viewed as a simple cinematic view of the world broken down into good guys and bad guys. His central american, latin american policies, this was something that was manifested in support for a lot of unsavory characters who engaged in human rights abuses against leftist insurgents or leftist regimes. I just want to say, you know, this is this one moves me personally. This one reminded me of a quote from mark twain. Im sorry, i didnt memorize the quote. Im going to paraphrase it, which you should never do with a writer as good as mark twain but the essence is, when youre writing humor, you should never try to teach and you should never try to preach. But if you want your humor to last, it has to do both of those things. This is an image that will last. It does a little bit of both of those things exceedingly well. Its very good at capturing the fundamental debate about the threat or what constituted the threat in central america, in general, nicaragua particularly. Reagan always thought that the problem was a communist threat. In fact, during the campaign of 1980, he talked about dominos falling in central america. Mexico would be next. The last domino would be the united states. In some ways that reflected his policies. Also the question always was, to what extent was the sandinista regime a threat aligned with moscow, to what extent it had those problems in central america. Reagans understanding of the threat didnt come from the movies. It wasnt because there were good guys and bad guys and he was used to playing the sheriff. Something he didnt do a lot of in the movies, as it turns out. It came from his education in the early cold war that had more to do with communists in hollywood than it did with good guys and bad guys on the movie set. One thing to compare this one to the previous one. This is me being too much of an historian is vietnam, right . So, part of it that earlier one is water is up to reagans chest, its up to carters neck. But reagan essentially leaves the veietnam era without having been coated with vietnam. Hes governor. Hes also not coated with watergate so he escapes the two traumatic moments in american politics of that decade. And emerges somewhat as, ill call, it hes dry here. Hes not in a quagmire. So he is going to make this pivot on vietnam and makes his attempt to move america into a postvietnam period. So, this particular cartoon is not about vietnam. I see the shadow of vietnam right there in the background of several of these reagan cartoons here. One of the great frustrations of reagans acting career is that he was not able to get the parts that went to john wayne or gary cooper, the heroic western parts. And i think one of the satisfactions of his political career is that he did get to play those parts as a leader first of the conservative wing of the republican party, then as a candidate for Vice President and finally as president. One thing that cartoonists are seldom credited with is graciousness and i think this is just a very gracious farewell to Ronald Reagan. By the end of his term, he was able to claim a great deal of success in terms of prosperity and in terms of peace. There are many people who were worried when he took office that he would blow up the world, get the world into a nuclear war, and he actually formed a constructive relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev and was able to negotiate Nuclear Arms Limitation and reduction, contrary to the expectations of both of his opponents and many of his supporters. So, i think this is while the portrayal of reagan as a cowboy early in his term was one that was most often done by his opponents, up with of him riding off into the sunset at the end of his term is one more celebratory. One quick comment. I dont know how many people watch the show mystery science theater, this may be dating me, but its basically the show where there are two people sitting in a these taater and t just make smart alec comments about the movie going on. Thats a cult thing. I thought about the searchers, the ending scene in the searchers with john wayne who delivered this woman who had been lost back and hes leaving and he cant be with the people inside the house anymore and the frame is just the open door and, you know, the west outside and john wayne walks out as this solitary figure. I would love to know if he with could look back in mr. Oliphants mind at this point how framing done by hollywood helped, you know, seep into maybe theres something in the archive. If theres some earlier drafts, maybe we could make some comparison. Since this is our last cartoon, i thought i would bring up something more generally about reagan and editorial cartoonists. He met with them at least twice while he was in the white house. Once in 1986 and again in 1987. I think they had an annual convention in wash and so they came by the white house. In 1986 theres actually video of it. I hoped that we would be able to show it to you. We cant. You can google it. Its on youtube. And you can see Ronald Reagan shaking mr. Oliphants hand, going around the table, and then he reads prepared remarks from his little 3x5 cards, the jokes are there, all the things to say are there. And he takes his turn at an easel and tries to draw a character that comes from a bill mauldin cartoon during world war ii. He does rather poorly but he wrote in his diet about it. High spot in the day was lunch in the cabinet room with about 20 top editorial cartoonists. The laughter was continuous. I think maybe that a few were softened up a bit. Maybe, maybe not. In any case, this is, i think, a fitting closing to our panel of final cartoon. It raises the question again about reagan was the acting president. To what extent hollywood influenced him, to what extent he was very good at all the symbolic theatrical parts of the presidency. He was good at that. The other thing we found out over time is that reagan wrote large parts of his speeches, sometimes the whole thing. But it in put the words in forms that could connect with the audience. Sometimes, although he didnt do it, intervene in real debates about policy and make hard choices, too. So, in some ways theres a kind of soft focus and movie quality to the reagan presidency in which reagan plays that lead role. But its more than him just following a script. He did an awful lot to write the script, for better or worse. You know, when reagan first ran for governor of california, what his opponent, the incumbent governor pat brown thought would be the killer line is, you cant have an actor as governor. And then the same concerns were raised the same dismissive objections were raised when he ran for president. Think about it. Part of a president s job, its become an indispensable part of a president s job, is to relate to tens of millions of americans through the cold, hard lens of a camera. Stage actors can comedians, they can play off a live audience. But to be able to connect with an audience that isnt there while youre doing your job, to be able to get them to believe you and like you, as film actors have to do, thats a highly translatable skill into the kind of public leadership that we require of president s today. Now, more recently, weve gone to a small screen. Celebrity apprentice isnt the same as win one for the gipper. I think people to connect that arent there, in a way thats appealing and believable, we now know because of Ronald Reagan, thats part of the president ial job description. I think we are now out of time but i want to thank all my fellow panelists here and thank you for being here. [ applause ]. Were featuring American History tv programs of a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. We shoi you remarks from the annual lincoln Symposium Forum which takes place every november in gettysburg, pennsylvania. Historian joan waugh and Gary Gallagher ask the question, what caused the civil war . American history tv tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. Next on reel america, a united autoworkers film promoting president frank lynn roosevelts campaign for a fourth term. The 13minute animated film is directed by Academy Award winner chuck jones who helped create bugs bunny and other characters for warner brothers. In 1966 produced and director how the grinch stole christmas