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Is the Pen Mightier Than the Word? Editorial Cartoons and 1988 Presidential Nominating Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Emmett H. Buell Jr.  and
Mike Maus
Emmett H. Buell Jr.
Affiliation:
Denison University
Mike Maus
Affiliation:
CBS Radio
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Extract

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then 1988 presidential nominating politics was a gold mine for editorial cartoonists. Exaggeration and distortion are the cartoonist's stock-in-trade, Colin Seymour-Ure (1986, 168) tells us, and—with Gary Hart's dalliance, Joseph Biden's plagiarism, Pat Robertson's direct line to God, Robert Dole's tantrums, Jesse Jackson's ego, and George Bush's image problems—there was much to exaggerate and distort in the 1988 races.

Like other journalists, editorial cartoonists follow and interpret campaigns for the public. Like columnists, cartoonists openly praise or condemn candidates and campaigns. But the power of pictures sets cartoonists apart from other editorialists. According to Doug MaHette of the Atlanta Constitution, the fundamentals of cartooning are distortion, hyperbole, and subjectivity. Cartoons, he writes (1988, 158), “distort and reflect reality like fun-house mirrors.” Seymour-Ure (1986, 170) agrees: “The comments and insults conveyed by the graphic imagery of a cartoon have a crudity and offensiveness that might well be unacceptable if spelt out in words.”

As long as editorial cartoonists have caricatured politicians, politicians have feared for their public images. Thomas Nast helped topple Boss Tweed in the 1870s by repeatedly drawing him and his ring as corrupt. “Stop them damn pictures!” Tweed reportedly roared after an especially tough Nast cartoon appeared in 1871. Vice President Bush may have harbored similar resentment when he recently complained about Gary Trudeau's representations of him in “Doonesbury.” A particularly painful stab of the Trudeau pen was placing Bush's manhood in a blind trust.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Fall 1988 , pp. 847 - 858
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1988

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References

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