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Chris Lamb
Associate Professor, Media Studies, The College of Charleston, Charleston, SC
Author of the forthcoming book, Drawn to Extremes: The Use and Abuse of Editorial Cartoons (Columbia University Press).

The 2000 Presidential Campaign between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush inspired little passion on the part of either the electorate or the media. This, of course, changed on Election Night - when everything, including the winner, was called into question, and the line between news and satire became so blurred it became practically indistinguishable.

Even though Gore secured the popular vote, he did not win enough electoral votes to secure the presidency. The election hinged on Florida, where Bush's brother Jeb was governor and where charges of voting irregularities turned the Sunshine State into a banana republic. As the outcome in Florida dragged on and on, the election itself became a cartoon and Florida became the banana peel we all slipped.

Generations from now it may well be the editorial cartoonists who created the most realistic picture of the election. Cartoonists caught the absurdity of the election with drawings that satirized the charges of voter fraud, the squabbles over recounted and uncounted ballots, and court challenges that eventually found their way before the U.S. Supreme Court, where the conservative majority decided the election in Bush's favor. Robert Ariail of The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, captured Gore's fate by showing the Democratic donkey holding a punched-out ballot that read: "It's Over!"

Over the next several months, critics ridiculed Bush as an unworthy inheritor of the throne who neither sounded nor looked presidential. To editorial cartoonists, Bush appeared to be an amalgam of the children's book character Curious George and the Mad magazine cover boy, Alfred E, Neuman. Bush became comfort food for cartoonists - though their drawings rarely went beyond relatively banal gags to anything approaching hard-hitting social satire.

The events of September 11, 2001, profoundly changed the rules of engagement for cartoonists, who directed their sense of outrage at a world that shifted uneasily under their drawing boards. In the fog of war that followed, cartoonists gave Bush a promotion from Curious George to George Washington. Cartoonists drew Bush as an indomitable symbol of the country's fight against terrorism - as an icon of strength, power, and freedom. Amid the first great crisis of the 21st century, too many cartoonists replaced social criticism with drawings that had all the bite of recruiting posters.

A relatively few cartoonists, however, believed, contrary to much of the profession and also their readership, that it undermines our democracy to give our leaders a free pass during times of crisis. Joel Pett of the Lexington, Kentucky, Herald-Leader said that cartoonists had a patriotic duty to raise questions not only about the government's security failures leading up to September 11 but how the government took advantage of the tragedy to pass legislation such as the Patriot Act that denied hundreds, if not thousands, of law-abiding Americans their constitutional rights.

A few days after the tragedy, Pett chided Bush for declaring that America would "punish any state that harbored or trained terrorists." In one drawing, he wondered if this included the state of Florida, where the terrorists had lived and taken flying lessons. His readers were not amused. They canceled their subscriptions and left profane messages on his answering machine.

Given the scarred sensibilities of September 11, one editorial cartoonist's satire became a reader's sedition; one cartoonist's criticism of the Bush Administration became someone else's anti-Americanism. But nothing is more patriotic than criticism of the government. It is as irreverent as the Boston Tea Party and as American as the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment doesn't exist so we can praise our elected officials. The First Amendment exists so we can criticize our elected officials.

Editorial cartoonists - or at least the ones who have made the biggest difference - understand this better than most Americans. They are driven by a sense of righteous indignation. Thomas Nast took on "Boss" Tweed and New York City's corrupt Tammany Hall; Homer Davenport crusaded against corporate trusts; and Herbert Block (or Herblock as he signed his cartoons) reduced the ugliness of the 1950s Red Scare to "McCarthyism" and Richard Nixon to the sewer politician he was. Working in the Klan country of Missouri, Bill Mauldin captured segregationists as nothing but ignorant, malevolent hicks. More recently, Paul Conrad, Pat Oliphant, Jeff MacNelly, Mike Peters, Garry Trudeau, and others have captured the naked truths about our emperors.

Using shameless nationalistic blather, the Bush Administration questioned the patriotism of their critics, providing cover for their own flawed policies. When the administration prepared to invade Iraq, Clay Bennett of the Christian Science Monitor drew the administration's checklist for invading Iraq, where "a reason" was left unchecked. After the deaths of several hundred American soldiers, Jeff Danziger drew two soldiers running for cover with one of them saying: "I'm tellin' you . . . This whole situation could give slapdash, dimwitted, politically-inspired interventions a bad name."

While a number of cartoonists expressed the courage of their own convictions, most failed to raise their pens in protest. A lot of cartoonists had little to say beyond innocuous one-liners, others simply acted as apologists for the Bush Administration. Others were restricted by weak-willed editors with little understanding of either the purpose or the tradition of either editorial cartooning or American journalism.

Too many editors want editorial cartoons to be like news stories - fair and balanced. But that's not what editorial cartoons are supposed to do. When Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau was once criticized for being unfair, he said, "criticizing a political satirist for being unfair is like criticizing a 260-pound nose guard for being too physical."

As the newspaper industry has declined in both readership and influence, so, too have the journalistic responsibilities of editors, who opt for publishing generic syndicated cartoons over provocative, staff-drawn cartoons because they are cheaper and generate fewer phone calls. As a result, the number of editorial cartoonists working for newspapers has fallen to a 30-year low. An editorial page without its own staff cartoonists is, to borrow from Trudeau's analogy, like a football team without a nose guard.

Newspaper editors need to quit acting like government bureaucrats and corporate accountants. If they begin acting like guardians of the public trust, as they're intended, they may find that their editorial pages give readers something to look forward to. They can do this by hiring editorial cartoonists and then by allowing them to do their job as unfettered as possible. Newspapers that give their cartoonist the freedom to express their own views, as freely as possible from editorial restraint, reinforce the provocative message than an uninhibited exchange of opinions is necessary for a democracy.

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