we're going to get started here with round two of presidents on when all of that was able to bestow his gift on a country and he would bestowed his gifts

by con batting and with words. i am mike nelson, i'm the guy you had to put up with during first panel. fortunately we have a new cast of people to add their voices to the wonderful voices you have heard from the scholars who are on the first panel. we've got miller saturday, people here one of its main emphases is to focus on studying the presidency in-depth, historical depth, with objectivity, and other words we are all in the business of doing stuff that and editorial cartoonist is not in the business of doing which is reacting to events on a day to day basis more than 10,000 times in his 60 plus years as a newspaper cartoonist, and where we all strived to be as objective as we can, the job of the editorial cartoonist as

well as anybody who's ever done, it to provide comments, opinion, something to provoke discussion, rather than aspire to subtle discussion. the panel today, this afternoon, which will cover the presidents from george bush i don't use the h. w. he was george bush when he was president. when john quincy adams became the president, john adams did not have to change his name. and his immediate georges bush is immediate successor bill clinton, and george w. bush, the one who came next and then finally we sort of dipped our toes into the obama presidency part of which we were able to capture in his cartoons we will

see one example pad all offense great gifts as a sculptor unfortunately we only get to seed into dimensions. it is an extraordinary work one of our panelists, mary kay carey, can tell us something about that sculpture and about the president who it portrays american is a senior fellow at the center. she has been teaching this year at the politics department at the university she was a speech writer and a communication specialist of all sorts in 1988 and then and george bush presidency, if philip, former director of the miller center and a member of the history department here, held prominent positions and both bushes administrations. both george and george w.

administrations and probably did other things that i am not even aware of that are worth noting. and then chris low, i've seen fellow at the miller center has worked over the years and all three branches of government. i don't know how many people get to say that truthfully, including seven years in the obama administration. what we are going to do is the same thing we did the first time around. we will take cartoons from each one of these presidencies and sequence all of them creations, that are now part of the university of virginia's special collection library that are available in many cases for you to go see either there or over at the miller center where there are some others. let's start with that first cartoon.

for those of you who cannot read that far back because i know it is a little difficult, you've got george bush on the top. what they tried to sell, then as he is perceived, then dukakis, what they tried to sell and as he is perceived. then it's it is his altered ego. i cannot read. can anybody else read that? you got it? there you go. >> altered eagles are how we think of them when we think of them at all. >> there you go. so, i was on the 1988 bush dukakis campaign on the bush side. i would say, the top half it's exactly not true, not how he was perceived. the bottom half is exactly how he was perceived from our point

of view. and i remember having a t-shirt that said, beware of greeks wearing lifts. and there was a lot of joking about the difference in height between dukakis and bush and 60 or 63. i remember there was a saturday night live skip called dukakis after dark. it played upon this, that there was this other side to michael dukakis that nobody. saw on the top side i would say the left side of what they try to sell is exactly what we all perceived and george bush. a war hero, 58 combat missions, and a lifelong public servant i met david mccaul or when i made the documentary. david mccaul oh said to me it

takes about 50 years for historians to render judgment on a president and how glad he was to see that historians had come around on george bush and had given him the credit that he truly deserved and that george bush was alive to see it and so i do think that he was admired widely, especially by the time he died. i do think the top of this is not accurate but i am a little biased. >> what is being portrayed here, one of the challenges, by the way for the panel is, for many of you, we don't need to explain what the references are in these cartoons. many of you probably remember, or they're talking about the wind factor. they're talking south -- of course for young people nowadays, they thought george bush was a win. why did they think he was a win?

that is actually a really good question. the origin of the win factor label was a news week magazine cover that actually had a picture of book bush under the wind factor. which stunned. at the time i was a career foreign service officer. i was not on the campaign trail and had no declared political affiliations. i would go into the administration as a detail-y from the state department to work in the bush white house from the beginning of 89. it may seem like 49 now as i, age and it all looks misty. but the question is, why why was he labeled like that. why did the label seem to stick? even if you are a bush partisan, and thankfully everyone who worked for bush became one if they had not been before.

as a sidebar, you do learn a lot about these leaders by looking at the attitudes of the people in the circle around them. he commanded a lot of loyalty among the people around him. but why? there is something about the thin really voice-y, having been kind of a second banana to reagan for eight years. the sense that on the campaign trail, he was actually not, in my view, a forceful and charismatic public speaker. he actually is one of those people, actually johnson had a little bit of those two, can speak better in private than in public. reagan by the way was just the opposite. so there are qualities there.

there is an emotional quality that would occasionally linked to the surface and since that i'm on the campaign trail, he would spout the conventional possible him. people asked him to say to different audiences. therefore, people had trouble getting a firm sense of him. some people vote on the right. the right wanted him to be a more concise muscular conservative, one image of him. he did not fit that. but there is something to this that you just have to recognize. there is something in the image of him that people are perceiving. i don't think by 19, i am not sure that by 1992, mr. all avant would have drawn bush the same way after the cold war that you will see after the the next cartoon. he sticks with the image for a while in the early bush time

frankly, because the caricatures seems to capture something that is resonating with a lot of the american people. you just have to then face up to that understanding. this is a final comment. this is one of the reasons these cartoons are so valuable they capture something about the way people are perceived in their generation that will then be lost 30 years later. by looking at the cartoon you can then recover. >> what i find interesting about these cartoons is how ingrained these public perceptions get in people's minds. as someone who has spent a lot of my life working on campaigns, it recognizes your liabilities and tries to push back against that. you have tried to push back against the unforced errors. the most famous unforced era was michael dukakis riding

around in a tank with an ill fitting helmet. no candidate would ever do that now. this could have been the perception of dukakis. the important moments of george bush, 41. whether it is the grocery scan or how that works, where the famous moment, the 1992 debate where he looked at his watch seeming to be bored. whenever we prep a candidate for debates, we take their watches off or tell them never ever look at your watch, and i remember when i was walking for working for john kerry in 2004, he was doing a presidential debate prep and we wanted him to break the debate camp to do public events. gas prices were high. we want to highlight how high gas prices were we want to send them out to philip aghast. tank to avoid the dukakis

moments or the george bush moment, we actually checked, do you know how to fill up a gas tank? it is not that we were never sure that senator kerry had ever filled up his gas tank, but it's one of those moments you did not want to happen. and part, because of these moments, you double and triple check every time you put your candidate and public, because you don't want these visual images to stick in the brain. when >> one thing we have not noted yet, which has been a presence in every cartoon we have seen and we will see, it's the presence of that little character down in the lower right quadrant. the pigeon who is the kind of defect or recourse, not a pigeon, a penguin that path all faint included in all of his cartoons to provide an additional dollop of commentary. for me, the joy of these cartoons is on the one hand,

there are snapshots of a moment on the other hand they are windows into a time. i think that we start seeing in 1988 and this cartoon, is the departure from the air in which we regard presidential elections as a contest between giants. think of theater whites in 1960 it was a key leaves, and they were meeting on the field of battle, to titanic figures khoury even one of them was worthy of trotting on a heroic stage, now we think we see by 1988 we are looking at presidential candidates this diminished, and even comic figures. it has become a default setting ever since almond. >> so this is actually a very

nice cartoon. this is george bush and george washington walking downtown pennsylvania avenue are not duration date 1989, and that was the 200th anniversary, not to the day, but to the year of george washington being sworn in at the same time george bush was sworn in. so president bush was actually very honored by that and got sworn in using two bibles when stacked on top of the other, and when was the bush family bible, any other george washington's bible. he started his inaugural address by pointing that out because he was so honored by that, and one other comment that brought this to mind was, that same conversation with david mccullough, he believes that george bush was the most qualified person to run for president since the founders at the time. he didn't say it at the time

but he said it afterwards that brought it to mind as well. all the jobs that president bush had done in service to our country before he came president perfectly prepared him for that moment and it is the reason why we were able to get through the cold war without a single shot being fired so that is what jumped out at me. he was very proud of that moment. >> the only thing i thought was amusing at this point was the building on the right-hand side is the old post office, which is now the trump hotel. and what is interesting about this without talking about the current president. presidents, i don't think, i think it is seen as bad form for previous presidents. while it was perfectly appropriate for president bush to pay homage to george

washington and the bible. it is not the classiest thing to say i am the greatest president since so-and-so. simply to say that there are subtle ways that it references back to previous presidents. everybody wants to seem kennedy-esque without saying i am being like john kennedy. that is one of the interesting things i sign this cartoon. you can't see what punk is saying but and it beautiful george. the second george is written in a different pot. 18th century font. upon on to georges and then 18th century fought. >> the image of the other president in this picture, george washington, who has come down to us as this sort of

blind and even boring figure. solid and virtuous in every way but no spark of life do we see in any of the pictures that we have of george washington. just take out your dollar bill and look at that. whereas in truth i don't think any american in history has been a figure of such excitement and adoration in his own generation as george washington was. people are crazy about george washington. they thought he was not only respectable and had all the virtues of respectability but was an exciting guy, a sexy guy. but washington i think is doomed to always be the bland figure that his portrait tests portrayed him as. >> i had to ask, i guess i

should read this out loud. apparently dan quail in the baby carriage saying greg mccarthy is numb. george bush saying my goodness listen to that little dan first word in office. this is a reference to the tower nomination. that then quail said that the people opposed to john towers his nomination were engaging in mccarthy is. i find this very unfair. i think there is a little bit of background which is that george bush first met john tower in 1961 when george bush was harris county republican chair in houston. that was a big deal.

john tower decided to run for lyndon johnson's senate seat in the special election after johnson left to become vice president. that is when the two of them first became friends. at this point they've been friends for almost four years. in 1968, i think there was a discussion earlier on the earlier panel, of the short list for president ford. according to meacham's book about bush, destiny and power, nixon's shortlist for vp was john tower, george bush, sparrow and new and one more -- ronald reagan. would that not have been something? we here comes 1989. at this point tower is former senator tower, former chair of the armed service committee.

bush names his old friend to secretary of defense and it comes out that there is concerns about his love of women and boos. also some sort of conflict of interest investigation as well. first time since 1959 that a cabinet officer was not confirmed. the senate at that point was 45 republicans, 55 democrats i believe. the vote went down 47, 53. 53 no. that to me means i believe, it means to democrats crossed over. and voted yes. or more republicans voted no. it was due to the fact that the democrats were in control of the senate. that is what tower did not get through. what george bush felt loyalty

goes down as well as up. he was tremendously loyal to john towers despite all the flaws that were exposed. in meacham's book, he tearfully says to john tower i will not pull the rug out from under my friend and stuck with him. also that's why he was tremendously loyal to clarence thomas his nomination as well. i believe he inaccurately is depicted here as treating dan coyle as some kind of baby. that could not be further from the truth. he went against the advice of everyone. all kinds of people on the short list for vice president, he went with jail in a surprise move. he treated him as an equal. i think because he himself had been a vice president and he wanted the same treatment from his vice president. he continued the tradition he started with president reagan,

having lunch every week with the vice president. he had a close relationship and i think this is not the way he looked at then quail. philip probably has more to say. >> this is about a speech he gave after the nomination was defeated. i take a more sympathetic view to the cartoonists perhaps then mary kate does on this one. i do not join the dan coyle rehabilitation lobby. i agree with what mary kate said. bush tried treat him the way he thought of vice president should be treated but i do not think that he was not the one key insiders of the bush administration though he was in a lot of meetings and as i said, bush treated him appropriately anne's but he was not a very

influential person i believe in the senior ranks of the administration. here is what happens here. it is early at 89 towers had gone up and been defeated i quayle gave a nasty speech saying he was defeated by mccarthy is. not knowing anything about this panel, last month i was with sam and jack reed for a another reason. none, basically for some reason started reminiscing about the tower fight at some length. to this day, he feels that it was perhaps the hardest thing he ever had to do in the senate. he had known tower for a long

time as all senators had. he worked with him on armed services for many years. to accuse -- and by the way a lot of this investigation was done extremely confidentially. very little of the detail that was found in the investigation was ever made public. to accuse basically sam none to be the latter day version of john mccarthy was at not a wise thing to say and it was not as prudent thing to say since of course bush would be depending on people like sam none in an essential partner that he was trying to get done. ... >> as the secretary of defense, dick cheney would take that over. people noticed in 89 that this

was dan quayle making his political debut in a big way. he had been very mild mannered on the campaign trail in 88. he made his debut in early 89 as the hitman roll. people used to associate agnew as he had done for nixon. it was not an attractive role for quayle and it was not an attractive role for bush to have quayle play. i think all of fat is basically calling him on it. >> whoever thinks dan quayle was underrated or for the first time tonight overrated. this to me is a brilliant example of the caricaturist's art. we saw the cartoons with their

noses, actions and i were treated in typical caricature fashion. exaggerated. fault here we do not even see then quail, the impression being he is in infant and therefore have no significance at all. but to not show a character as a form of caricature is really interesting. >> the baby carriage has that fancy monogrammed initial q. like the super fancy baby carriage from a wealthy family. that is a nice touch. >> i forgot to say earlier. the little bubbles signifying dan quayle reminds me of doonesbury at the time. he would always show president bush skip the evil twin.

he was either an asterisk or a feather or little but -- almost like that. it became a huge joke in the white house. president bush got a big kick out of it. there were many prank photos taken of bob gates, dick cheney and people like that talking to an empty chair. talking to a podium when no one was at it. then they would sign it and send it to the president. it was this big joke. you may recall dana harvey at the time doing hilarious impersonations of the president. after he lost the election, he invited dinnick harvey to the white house and laughed at himself tremendously and it impress -- impersonations of him. it was the beginning of a great friendship. the doonesbury cartoons some of the oliphant cartoons and the dana carvy stuff is at the library because it was such a big part of it.

>> chris do you want to comment? >> let's move on to the clinton years. >> oh we do? let's not move on to the clinton years. >> so in one week there was -- after he left office, it was the funeral of president ford who is at the national cathedral. i went to it. there were a tremendous number of boy scouts who were assures at the cathedral for the service. because gerald ford was an eagle scout. my children went to the cathedral schools and new some of the choir boys who sang at the state funeral. president bush gave a eulogy for president ford amongst other presidents speaking. the choir boys iran into the next day and they said we want you to know we had a vote. president bush gave the best eulogy of all of the eulogists.

i said oh my gosh, boys i will tell the president he would love to know that. in hindsight, i told the story years later at his funeral, but i think president bush knew there would be boy scouts in the aisles and so the tone of the eulogy is this is what young people can learn from jerry ford. sure enough there were choirboys there who got the message and loved it. so the same week i go to the national portrait gallery who just opened it -- up their new presidential portraits wing. this culture from oliphant is in front of the presidential portraits of bush. still there. i found it wonderful and captured his love of horseshoes and athleticism in many ways. i wrote a lot of notes to president bush over the years and he would right back. we were penthouse. i have this binder, personal

notes from 41 which i brought with me. i wrote him this note and said first of all you won the choir boys. second of all, you have to go to the national portrait gallery next time you are in town and you have to see this thing. he wrote me back and i thought i would read it to you. it is dear mary kate. overwhelmed and i, imagine a guy like me winning the vote of national choir boys according to might eulogy. i would love to go to the portrait gallery sunday with my new hip in place. i have to go out now and kick some serious but. thanks for writing. love gee be. the next thing you know, he saw pictures of it, he did not go, there's one at the national gallery of art and one of the bush library.

he really enjoyed that sculpture and i want to say thank you to mr. oliphant for creating. it >> there is one at uva. >> there is? >> any other comments on this marvelous sculpture. >> i love this cartoon. let me try to describe it to you. it is depicting a couple of used carlsen -- car salesman. on the left it's as conservative health care. a sort of thuggish looking salesman. the sign says like new, runs real nice, needs cosmetics. then you have bill clinton that says imagine your new car here. clinton health care coming soon. on the right banner supporting clinton it says we finance. punk in the middle says who do you fancy we should buy a used

car from? the reason i love this cartoon is because it is incredibly timely. this was from the 1993 health care fight. you could fast forward and basically take the affordable care act, obamacare, put it where conservative health care is. you could put in the place of clinton health care, whatever trump has proposed or wants to propose. the wheat finance is perfect because obviously that is the criticism of big progressive health care plan like medicare for all. it really depicts i think, the challenge we have with health care and the system. we do not -- we have a series of not very appealing options that are presented by politicians. a lot of it is simply imagining what something could look like if you could finance it in some way. and so a lot of the cartoons,

especially this one which is timely. >> the republican kink -- the republican car is in old gta with the fuzzy dice hanging from the mayor. i think this is the best cartoon i have ever seen from the clinton administration. really in a way that image of clinton and the hold white house portrayed captures something deep about clinton and a lot of things that i think in a way only a picture like this imagined in this way could do. one of the things that is interesting about the oral histories that has been conducted, is reading through the ones that have been released. you may recall that it worked its way into the popular memory

of the election. that james famously wrote on a wall at the headquarters in little rock, change versus more of the same. it's the economy, stupid. don't forget health care. a lot of people concluded that one of the issues when he ran for president in 1992 was health care. it comes through loud and clear in these oral history interviews in which you can access through the miller website. he did not talk free much about health care. touch about welfare reform and other issues. when he became president he had this impression that health care was going to be a major part of his agenda. he bought into that. it turned out to be the biggest political failure of his first >> let me lead off on this. the date is important. it's october of 1993. to help you remember, late october of 1993. this was the month of black hawk down.

this is a really bad month. the haiti mess also. what you've got here is blind man clinton in the darkening park. this is the best of foreign policy, christopher? he seeing-eye dog, who is also blind says, yes sir, i believe it is. christopher is born christopher, his secretary of state. then you have them knowing the bus is coming. next stop, bosnia. they are in the dark and they are blind as to what they are doing and where they are going. they are looking for that bus to foreign policy. for that particular moment in

october of 1993 it >> kind of catches it. >> one of the things that clinton learned by virtually being president on the job was that he could make unpopular decisions on foreign policy in matters like haiti and bosnia and mexico and so on. he can make decisions in the short term he knew would be unpopular. yet to arrive benefit of being admired as a president who is willing to make tough decisions. clinton's own way of making sense of the fact that by the first term, people thought of them with high regard in foreign policy. he said it's like taking your kids to the dentist. they never want to go, but they appreciate the fact that you took them there when they were kids. i think you and something about foreign policy by having a

president oversee foreign >> i will start with this one. incredibly timely. february 11, 1999, this is after bill clinton is acquitted after impeachment. he is dancing on the left, playing bongo's smoking a cigar saying, free at last, free at last, break out the broad's, i'm free at last. you have history writing in the book in the upper right. punk is saying the moving finger right moves on. this is the part where punk may be wrong in the sense that, if people will remember post-impeachment, clinton was fairly popular. he actually left office fairly popular. history does not just write once. we have seen the way that history has continued to

reevaluate bill clinton and his perceptions of change over the last couple of years. but it does short it does sort of show that even in impeachment effort that sales still leaves a mark in history. that is something that is not to be underestimated in 1999 or 2019. >> contrast this with the cartoons of 1993. both those cartoons you looked at, clinton is portrayed they are poking fun of him but there are sides of the cartoons that are affectionate. this strikes me as a bitter cartoon. the view of clinton has soured in some deep way. the way he is portrayed, even down to the imagery of the bongo drums, the irresponsible beatnik side of it. this is an angry cartoon. the contrast between that, even that health care cartoon, which

is really so affectionate. this image is powerful to me. mary >> my reaction the previous panel there was a lot of discussion of noses. clinton's nose has evolved since 1993. the cigar, he kind of looks like he is naked to me and only wearing socks. as a mother i am like, ew. i think the fence of disappointment and how bill clinton end of his term with history looking over him like that is palpable. i agree that the sentiment of when he left office is very different to know than in the opposite of way of how it was with george >> this incident of

bill clinton in post-acquittal revelry, going to africa and playing the bongo drums and smoking the big cigar, that actually happened. there is something about being gracious in victory that i think is appealing to americans and not being gracious in victory. not dancing on the berlin wall for example. in george bush's case, it's offputting. i think pat oliphant capture that. yes, we did not force him out of office, yes we think he is doing a good job as president, but, come on. mary kate: i will take this one. this is george w. bush surrounded by republican saying, i am going to have to reposition myself away from you guys, i am a compassionate

conservative. one of them says, what the hell is that gw? and one says, i that you said you will need all the help you can get? this was before the 2000 election. this was october of 1999. i remember at the time when he labeled himself a compassionate conservative, there were many of us on the right who said, wait a minute, are you saying the rest of us are not compassionate? it was a real sticking point that arthur brooks wrote this. it was not helpful that you did that. i can see why it was fodder for humor. it did step on it a lot of people's toes. it does make a good point. philip: you will see he will use this motif again. at this time the white hat

seems roughly appropriate to bush. i would just stop >> this is october of 1999 when he is running for office. in interesting dynamic when presidential candidates run against washington or their own party. he is saying i'm not like these other people in washington, this is not inconsistent with when bill clinton ran for office and barack obama ran. they all would have the same color again whether it's white or black. the president learns we may run against these people. they are going to protect you.

they will >> fight your battle. >> s captured here, he defined himself in distinction from the prevailing image of congressional republicans who are seen as hard edged and callous, and not as all not captured by the word compassionate. years running for president by running against his party. while he is president after he wins and is reelected. he is a true incarnation of ronald reagan. since then, with the rise of donald trump, george w. bush is essentially an outlier once again. i remember seeing bush quoted

one time on the issue of immigrants crossing the border without documentation. his comment was, if they are willing to cross the big end, we want them. and you and them can you imagine a republican saying anything like that today? bush is a president who often said, i am not going to try to valuate my performance in office, i will leave that to history. history will have an interesting time with this change and reputation within >> own party. >> incidentally, if you're interested in how they are trying to reconcile, carl cannon wrote a terrific book on all of that. i will give a shout out to carl. it is trying to come to grips with what you just raised. i think it may be named reagan and bush in the title. michael: that is >> homework.

>> this a six days after 9/11. if you cannot read, the little boy is reading a teacher called civil liberties. there is no punk, there is no comment. and the cartoon needs little comment from me. it's an ambivalent cartoon and very sensitive. there was a way this could have been done in which uncle sam is portrayed as being overbearing and too muscular. actually uncle sam in the cartoon is portrayed as a noble heroic figure. but watch out for the back

swing kid. >> uncle sam looks a lot like abraham lincoln. which then goes back to suspending the civil war. that may have been me reading too much into it. mary kate: i thought the same thing. it looks like lincoln. it goes to the continuing debate between privacy and security. this sums it up perfectly. michael: it is interesting that six days after 9/11, pat oliphant would realize that civil liberties are going to be part of what we are going to end up having to be concerned about an hour understandable and immediate desire for safety and security and order. if you recall that time, it was not just the actual events, but there was the almost predictable we were all predicting that 9/11 would be

the first of a series of attacks. that was the beginning rather that the end of a series of similar attacks coming out of nowhere and even worse, coming out from within the united states. and saying, don't forget civil liberties and uncle sam being telling silverton telling civil liberties to watch out for the consequences. i think that is an extraordinary timely, at a time when most people are not thinking about that. >> all right. >> (inaudible) >> there he is. >> okay. all right.

now we have our act together. this cartoon requires a little bit of explanation. i do not know how well you remember this episode mary kate about u.s. attorneys in oh 6:07. >> yeah i do. but you go first. >> this is march 2007. a little context. in the winter of 2006 to 2007, the white house and the new attorney general, out gonzales, come up with the scathingly brilliant idea that the patriot act at the time have been passed in a way that allowed u.s. attorneys to be appointed without senate confirmation if needed. someone had the idea let's fire several of them that are kind of i'm not just to us for one reason or another. put up a list of them and then

we can throw appointees in their place without having to go through senate confirmation quickly. they actually began this process, notoriously fired i think eight. of them. then defending that they fired eight, there was talk that we could have fired all 93 of them. as presidents always do at the beginning of their first term. but this was not the beginning of the first term. this was not even the beginning of the second term. this is well into the second term. there is an outcry that is going on for a few months by the time this cartoon is written. investigations at first, various people at the justice department said the white house had nothing to do with all of this. all staffers who uttered such words would later have to resign. one of those staffers had come straight from the white house and become chief of staff, he

had to resign. a woman at the justice department who uttered words like that also had to resign because the emails emerged. it turns out the white house had been involved. there were political issues. some of this did link to carl rove who was putting a little bit of heat on the white house counsel. here you have this cartoon. now as all of these emails are coming out. it was clear that the white house and karl rove were involved to some degree about non partisan ideas about the u.s. art attorneys. fire all u.s. attorneys, all 93 of them, we can claim it was harriet marries idea. focusing another brilliant idea. then you have dick cheney. notice bush portrayed, you can barely see him in his seat as opposed to change.

carl as a brilliant idea. there you are. one of the interesting things to me is i read this in the march of oh seven. on the inside, cheney's power is already waning a lot in the second term. the public image has not caught up to that reality yet. this particular episode did not help. bush himself had to go out and publicly state that he thought the firings of the eight had not been handled well. that famous expression was uttered, mistakes were made. no one involved in this came out looking good. and of course they did not go fire all 93 u.s. attorneys. >> the next step that happened after that in the aftermath was there was somebody at the justice department who was interviewing new u.s. attorneys

and saying how much do you love our president please tell me? do you remember that from -- philip? it was sort of a loyalty question added to the job interview. that hit the washington post. there were rogue line prosecutors who saw an opening because they felt that the justice department was on the rocks a little bit. they indicted senator ted stephens and that was the beginning of how the indictment got through. they thought no one at the justice department would stop the indictment of a republican senator when this was going on. as we all know, that was a mishandled prosecution that later got overturned by the obama attorney general once he got in office. there is a longer story with all that. the thing that struck me looking at it from a comic point of view. carl rove there looks so evil.

he has sort of rehab himself over the years into a nice guy talking head on tv. cheney has been completely vilified. it's interesting to see cheney kind of benign there and carl rove looking so evil. nowadays it is sort of reversed in pop culture. one other thing i think is interesting is if you ask most americans. at least at the time the perception was cholera of this evil genius. dick cheney pulling all the strings. it will be interesting how history evaluates that relationship. if any of you have been to the george w. bush library. it's a wonderful place to visit. i think they try very hard to push back on this narrative. that his decisions were controlled by other people.

it will be interesting to see how those public perceptions change as history goes on. >> i recall one occasion where this played out. i was the director of the 9/11 commission. we interviewed both of the relevant former presidents. bush and clinton, as was the vice presidents cheney and gore. arranging these interviews was difficult. we go to the white house to interview bush. bush and cheney had asked to be interviewed at the same time. we accepted. it was basically ten commissioners and me. but they had their note takers. some of the commissioners, the democrats, were upset by the

ground rules because cheney would dominate the conversation and they would not be able to hear from bush. of course actually the opposite happened. bush absolutely dominated the conversation. he actually had to work hard to get questions to cheney and get him to talk. afterwards the democrats said maybe that was cheney's plan all along. people mean you've wish a little bit knew about his relationship this was not a surprise. for sure -- and this was in the spring of all four wishes not ash shrinking -- he's quite articulate talking to him was quite entirely different from clinton who also

fills up the room conversationally digressions a musings or speculations burns the clock up. bush by the way it's not -- he's incredibly direct to the point, this this key point. boom boom boom next. that was very much the pattern we actually talked to him in all four. but here you are a few years later. let me ask a question of all of you if there are certain presidents of whom the public perception that there must be somebody in there and the administration are in the white house who is really making things happen? that perception doesn't arise for all presidents. it arose or george w. bush,

it's cheney or it's rose, president trump, somebody's pulling a chain. nobody ever said that about barack obama or bill clinton. is it a partisan thing? is it that republicans they think they're not smart enough to do it on their own? how you explain this? >> you just answered the question. (laughs). >> that's too easy. i did not work with bill clinton. barack obama, you can say myth many things about him. very smart, very very smart. very professorial. clearly had his hands on a lot of different things. it is also, part of it is the ethos of white houses, or we could talk a little more about this. we have a mantra no trauma

obama. we did not leak, we did not write books to laugh at him. it was all about what was doing what was best for the president. it's not to say that there were not people who were strong advisers before him that just may never come out. this next one is -- this one is a little harsh. >> we are now going backwards in time. this is july of four. punk in the bottom right hand corner has nothing to say. i think you can read the caption in the upper right hand. it is bush who is wearing that white hat when you saw in the earlier cartoon, but who does not fit that white hat quite so well in this image. would it make you feel better

to know we had inaccurate intelligence? he is saying to the dying soldier. and of course, you have, look how big dick cheney is. he is standing over, he has nothing to say. again, the image does not require much commentary. for me, six months after this was written, i would start spending a lot of time in iraq. i did for the next couple of years after that, and so, a lot of these issues were very close to me. i'll just say, just to help you set the context, july of all for, is really a point at which the war in iraq starts going south. things were not going well and things kind of gradually unraveling. the un envoy to iraq was killed, a truck bombing august of zero

three. and then things begin to degrade and a kind of slow, incremental way. really, the whole country burst into flames. in 2004, things had gotten so bad when it burst into free flames, frankly we had a bloody fight. insider city in baghdad, south of iraq. really, just a hole -- we almost lost the war in the second half of 2004. the fighting was very bloody in the second half of 2004. and that is just getting going here. but by the beginning of 2005, we stabilize the situation a bit, and they started getting overly hopeful again. we go through some more cycles like this. but here we are, this cartoon is really set as the country is really beginning to visibly

explode. >> for those that don't know the reference. i actually did not know a reference. is it piazza? piazza is a famous statute in vatican city where mary is holding jesus. this is i think one of the most insightful bit harshest of cartoons might be one of the truest i guess. >> there is another one here you see here, president bush, with i think, and expression on his face that includes compassion, holding this fall and soldier. the irony is after leaving office, this has been a major activity a former president bush.

i'm also struck in this picture. whenever cheney is portrayed, there is no caricature to it at all. this is just the drawing of president cheney. i have no idea what to make of that. is it that you cannot caricature cheney, or he is one in an of himself? i don't know but i think it is kind of interesting that cheney is always just the way somebody would draw cheney if they were not caricaturist. >> i'll take this one. this is from march of 2007. this is a month after barack obama jumps and to run for president. on the left, it's hillary clinton and barack obama wrestling over the black vote. clinton is saying, the black vote is mine obama, i pander to it for years. i've taken it for granted four years it is mined by right.

obama! >> it's mine clinton, who has agreed right to it! punks says you'll be told later. so, an amazingly harsh view about how democrats view the african american vote as something that we fight over and it is a monolithic thing. someone owns it. the context for this cartoon was he ran a sort of this post-racial candidate. he did not talk about race. they had goodwill among african americans from bill clinton's time in office. it was not until after barack obama started winning the iowa caucuses that african american

votes started to come to him. it became a critical part of his political base. at this point it was a coin toss as to who would be able to win this critical voting bloc. >> the only thing i would add is this is exactly what republicans thought was going on at the time. (laughs) the whole perfectly captured sense of entitlement that pervade mrs. clinton. it's very funny from the other side of the aisle. >> at this time, very very early in the battle for the 2008 democratic nomination which was a year and a half yet to be decided. there was sort of uncertainty about obama among many african americans. not really about him per se, he

was a relatively new figure on the national stage, but rather could an african american be elected president in the united states of america? obama as chris pointed out did not run as jesse jackson had run, as the candidate of black america. he ran in a more transcendent way. what endeared him too many black voters is when he won the iowa caucuses. because the message to african american voters in states like south carolina was white people will vote for this guy. he could actually win. that i think had a lot to do with his winning this tug of war with hillary clinton for the black vote. then going to get the democratic nomination and then being elected and reelected as president. >> so this one is dated 2008

but i'm going to say it is april because i know when the pennsylvania primary was. in the upper left, hillary instructs barack on the finer points of being a regular guy. it is hard to see the detail but she is wearing these low riding jeans, she has a tattoo on her right arm, and an anchor, right. saying beer and a shot, chase it down, and don't raise the pinky when you drink, that is elitist. obama is wearing a very out of place suit in a trucker bar. you can see the pinky is kind of out. punk is saying, not to mention dangerous. when you drink, that is elitist, and punk is saying not to mention dangerous. this is barack obama, so i will not dispute the characterization. he is not the person you hang

out at the neighborhood bar with. is the portrail of hillary clinton. you will will recall that she was seen as out of touch. when she ran again in 2016, she was seen as not the choice of working-class voters. at this particular moment in the 2008 for the neutral primary, barack obama was winning a lot of young people, african-americans, was not winning that white, working-class voters that in the end prolonged the primary contest. we went all the way until virtually the last presidential primary because after the initial victories that obama one he lost a huge number of states in the midwest. the irony is that at this particular moment, particularly only moment in the hillary clinton campaign she was seen as the champion of the white working class voters. >> this looks to me like

harvard and yale law school at the bar trying to figure out how to drink a beer it just made me laugh. the guy with the harry back and his pants falling down. the whole thing makes me laugh. it totally hits a nerve of what people perceive those two. one elitist telling the other out to drink a beer. >> there are offhand comments that i think often stick with candidates for president. basket of deplorables. the 47%. thinking back to mitt romney in 2012. it was about this time that obama i think, trying to explain in a clinical analytical way why it is that so many white working class people were drawn to his opponent. in some cases to republicans. when he talked about, in their desperation they cling to their

guns, they cling to religion. i don't even know what that context was for speaking that or how it came out, but it became sort of see? this is what he really thinks about the people in this bar. >> i would also say that it was at this point in the campaign that someone had the bright idea to send barack obama bowling and he bowled something like a 47. he was not a boulder. it goes back to mike dukakis, don't put your candidate in a situation they are not comfortable in. >> there was a time in the 1980 primaries that candidate bush went bowling. and back in the late seventies, bowling shoes had different souls on them. you could slide with one foot and put the brakes on with the other. the security service did not know he was left handed and therefore left-footed. they put, they gave him a regular pair of shoes and he went flying as soon as he threw the ball. ended up in a heap on the bowling alley.

he jumped up and said nobody said this was going to be easy and nobody was right. we will go to the last one. >> this is obviously a big statue head a break obama. the masses are chanting obama he came to save us all. all hail obama. a great missile. a donkey on the left is saying all the as -- the else i've got ... i'm guessing this is this is 2008. this is the last one and it is a good one to end on? . you could do the same cartoon now about how democrats feel about obama. they idolized him. unrealistic expectations. i think this also plays on the

critique of obama as a celebrity. this was a constant theme that came up earlier in the 2008 campaign. you'll remember sarah palin famously mocked him for the hope and change thing. the first campaign that mccain ran against obama was titled celebrity. obama when he a accepted his nomination in denver, he did it with giant greek comes behind him which made him look god like. i think this is a fairly mocking. probably passionate way democrats look at obama. probably unfairly the idealization of obama. >> i do want to note, among the different ways you could have portrayed obama on the pedestal. notice the use of the easter island statute motif. it evokes the sense of pagans

warship-ing the idle. of course the pagans will all be in a banished civilization. actually looking at this now in 2019, you wonder if this civilization has vanished. it is being reborn on some other island and some other form. >> (laughs) >> i look at this photo. the easter island imagery to meet suggests that there was some mystery. we do not know what the easter island figures were about. i think what a lot of people had a hard time understanding was, what is obama me? what does it mean to elect someone for president that is unlike anyone other before. is he some magical figure? another way of looking at the crowd that is beneath him is in effect, that is the body politic.

to the extent that this had has a body, it is the people who have somehow folded their own identities into his. i think it captures something if you think back toye%úi novemr of 2008 and the months that followed. i think it captures something of the sense of hope, of not knowing how high obama could lead us and naturally, as happens with all presidents, but in his case to an exaggerated degree, the ensuing disappointment when you realize he is very smart, but he is a mortal man. i thought this was an astonishing cartoon. and it is the last of our astonishing cartoons, and you all have been wonderful to bear with us through all of this. let's think our panel.

and please, before we leave, another expression of gratitude towards pat oliphant, who is here in the audience.[captioning performed by the national (applause)

>> >> archives, museums, and around the country. the cartoons are featured in the journal of the white house historical association. he covered presidents from herbert hoover to geor