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,