Test. Test. Test. Test. Captioning performed by vitac that carter was so good at mastering the symbols of the office and in order to win our 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 turned out to be a political virtue. He was from georgia and was going to bring that sense of fresh blood and fresh spirit into 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 are running for president. The other way cartoonists responded is by drawing things about his southern and rural heritage. There was a famous cartoon of a white house limousine outside the whitehouse up on cinder blocks and there was jody powell, who was his press secretary, came into the Office One Day and asked his staff, theres this cartoon of the white house with a tire swing right in front of the door. What is this . Why is that funny . They explained people dont really put tire swings in their front yard. Jody powell said he went home that night and took down the tire swing and his kids were very upset. One question you might ask, whose staff would be more upset, kennedys or carters . Its kind of a tossup. 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. [ laughter ] i had never seen this before and ive looked long and hard at it. Its ten years after an event and maybe some of you have seen them, retrospective Television Shows and movies that bring our cultural understandings to something that happened in very different circumstances. I once went there to see the dike bridge and ive reached my own conclusions about who was at fault. And i read this as much more critical of kennedy than of carter. Maybe the carters white house staff had been too happy about it, 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 a lot of that criticism was also muted just because it was a kennedy. And of course it also reflects a struggle between a liberal and moderate wing of the democratic party, not that any of us have ever heard about anything like that. [ laughter ] well, if theres a this is one of many, many cartoons that was drawn during the 1980 election. And they sent a range of messages but i think if this were the only cartoon you had from 1980, this was the only one you saw, you might write a caption vote republican book look at the two alternatives whom the democrats were offering there. A lot of people did. They voted republican. And ill very quickly point out the presence of a kennedywashingtonin kennedywashington. But this is something that we cant it seems obvious to us as historians, but the power of that moment and the early 1960s, so i see this car moving forward in that its still the kennedys driving. Its also the issue of politicians as celebrity that is clearly becoming part of american politics in the 1980s when we do get Republican People voting for republican that started his career as a celebrity. One last tiny point, even though carter is the president of the united states, a kennedy is at the wheel. Another wheel. Go ahead. I think this is one is brilliant, frankly. Why do i think so . Because i think it captures some of the dimensions of what people called maleze in 1980, 1981. I know theres some people who can think back and remember how exactly that felt. Remember the misery index, the rate of unemployment and rate of inflation. Around 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. Ronald reagan said during the campaign, our best days are ahead of us, but it doesnt look like thats the kind of of captain hes prepared to provide the ship. Theres an ominous look on his face. And in some ways it is a 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 was also active. He did take the initiative in trying to bring about fundamental changes and one could argue that that first year of the reagan presidency is the most active year of reagans two terms in washington. The capture wain was going to de than just stand there. He was going to do something to save the ship. And a lot of people would say he had been rather than successful in doing it. Perfect capturing the moment. That is just what it felt like. That was the first election that i was i was 16 at the time, and it was like, Ronald Reagan, youve got the job. Good luck. I said at the beginning that weve got two cultures here, the long term view of scholars and we have the daytoday commentary of a great cartoonist, but in some ways those two cultures coincide. Just as this cartoon convoys 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 was elected twice but was forced out of office through the impeachment process. Jerald ford, jimmy carter, one time, there was a wide sense among scholars that the office had just become too big for any individual to fulfill it. 1981 turned 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 so 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. Its subtle and also powerful. It was very hard for cartoonists to caricature Ronald Reagan, but one trait of his that this brings out was a simple, cinematic view of the world broken down into good guys and bad guys. In his Central American his 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. And i just want to say, this one moves me personally. This one reminded me of a quote from mark twain and im i didnt memorize the quote, im going to paraphrase it, which you should never do, but the essence of what he said was 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, nick ka raug with a, particularly. During the campaign of 1980 he talked about dominos falling in Central America. Mexico would be next, and the last domino would be the united states. In some ways that reflected his policies. Also, though, the question was to what extent was the regime a threat aligned with moscow, to what extent it reflected those chronic problems in Central America. Reagans understanding of the threat, i 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, what i see in this, and this is me being too much of a historian, is vietnam. That earlier one is the water is up to reagans chest, its up to carters neck. But he leaves the vietnam era without having been coated with vietnam. Hes not coated with watergate. He escapes the two traumatic moments in american politics of that decade and emerges as a hes dry here. Hes not in a quagmire and he makes his attempt to move america into a post vietnam period. This particular cartoon is not about vietnam, but i see the shadow of vehement right there in the background of several of these reagan cartoons here. One of the great frustrations of reagans acting career was that he was not able to get the parts that got that went to john wayne or gary cooper, the heroic western parts. And one of the satisfactions of his political career was that he did get to play those parts as a leader first of the conservative wing of the republican party, then has a candidate for 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 are 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 mick hail gorbachev. Contrary to the expectations of both his opponents and many of his supporters. While the portrayal of reagan as a cowboy was most often done by his opponents, one of him riding off into the sunset at the end of his term is one more celebratory than otherwise. I dont know how many people watch the show mystery science theater. This may be dating me. But its the show where there are two people sitting in a theater and they make comments about the movie thats going on and it was a kind of cult favorite. Thats one thing. But i think about tthe searchers where john wayne is 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 how framing done by hollywood helped seep into maybe theres something in the archive, if theres some earlier drafts of this we could make some comparisons. Since this is our last cartoon, i thought i would bring up something more generally about reagan. He met with them at least twice while he was in the white house. Once in 1986 and then again in 1987, i think they had an annual convention in washington, and so they came by the white house. In 1986, theres actually video of it and i hope 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 by his 3 x 5 cards and he takes his turn at an easel and tries to draw a character that comes from a bill molden cartoon during world war ii. He does rather poorly. But he wrote in his diary about it. The laugher 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 with the final cartoon and it raises the question again about whether 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. But the other thing we found out over time is that reagan wrote large parts of his speeches, sometimes the whole thing, put the words in forms that could connect with the audience, sometimes, although he didnt always do it, intervene in real s about policy and make hard choices too. Theres a soft focus and movie quality to the reagan presidency in which reagan plays that lead role. He did an all of lot to write the script for better or worse. When reagan first ran for governor of california, the what his opponent, the incumbent governor, 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 and its become an indensable 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, comedians, they can play off of a live audience. But to be able to connect with an audience that isnt there while youre doing our 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. More recently, weve gone to a small screen president , Celebrity Apprentice is not the same one as win one for the giper. But the idea to be able to connect with people who arent there in a way that is appealing and believable is a 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 of my fellow pan fellow panelists here and thank you for being here. [ applause ] all week were featuring american tv history programs. Lectures in history, american artifacts. Real america, the civil war and special event coverage about our nations history. Enjoy American History tv now and every weekend on cspan3. American history tv products are now available at the new cspan online store. Go to cspan store. Org to see whats new for American History tv and check out all of the cspan products. The house will be in order. For 40 years, cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. , and around the country so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Hi, everyone. My name is adam cook and im a 2018 cspan student cam winner. Im encouraging you to wrap up this competition as the deadline is getting close. This is about the time i started filming my documentary the first year that i entered. Im in the d. C. Offices right now and im going to tell you that cspan student cam was an Incredible Opportunity for me to express my thoughts and my views about the Political Climate in the current day as well as connect with some local and state leaders in political office. Im excited that you all are interested in this and are pursuing this because its a once in a lifetime opportunity. Im excited you all are taking it. Theres time for you to enter the video competition. You have until january 20th to create a five to six minute documentary to explore the issues that you want the president ial candidates to address. Were giving away a total of 1
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