A Cartoonist Feasts on a President. So?
By JAMES BARRON
Published: August 31, 1994
SORRY, "Doonesbury," President Clinton is not the first world leader to be caricatured as an item of food: a century and a half ago, the hated King Louis Philippe of France was savaged as an overripe pear. The image stuck, and in French "pear" became slang for "fathead."
If you read a newspaper that doesn't have comics like "Doonesbury" and wonder what this is all about, for 10 days the strip has been portraying the President as a breakfast waffle. Straight-cornered, not soggy from syrup, the waffle at first chatted with a well-dressed aide who appeared to be Joshua L. Steiner, the Treasury Department functionary who disavowed his damaging diary about the White House's handling of the Whitewater affair.
Ever since the 19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast pinned the donkey on the Democrats and the elephant on the Republicans, cartoonists have been mapping the iconography of American politics. But food? Drawing the President as a waffle seems like an all-American update of the 1942 comedy "To Be or Not to Be." In a scene with Jack Benny, one character observed that a herring had been named after the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and a brandy after Napoleon. And of course there's that beef dish that was named after the Duke of Wellington.
When George Bush was in the White House, "Doonesbury" showed him as a vanishing point of light, poking fun at a Presidential program intended to reward volunteers. Vice President Dan Quayle was depicted as a feather.
As for Mr. Clinton, Garry Trudeau, who draws "Doonesbury," invited readers to choose a symbol: a flipping coin or a waffle. He did not say how many readers he heard from, but a week later the waffle appeared. But Mr. Trudeau's First Waffle was not the first waffle. Signe Wilkinson, the cartoonist for The Philadelphia Daily News, showed Mr. Clinton as the proprietor of "International House of Waffling" in April.
"There are only so many images to go around," said Ms. Wilkinson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1992. "Put 100 cartoonists in a room and say, 'Bill Clinton changes his mind,' and probably 75 of them would say waffle. You're trying to get across the idea of flip-flopping, but there has to be a twist."
Finding that twist has long been the cartoonist's challenge. The first half-dozen Presidents got off easy. "Newspapers didn't have cartoons," said John Stagg, a professor of history at the University of Virginia and the editor in chief of the papers of James Madison. "The equivalent was handbills and woodcuts, rather cruder sorts of things, where you did get fairly basic sorts of drawings. The humor and the satire derive not like Clinton with the waffle, but more from the situation itself."
In other words, you had to be there.
And then there was Boss Tweed. He wasn't a President, but after Nast began depicting his corrupt Tammany machine as a hungry tiger devouring New York, Tweed bellowed, "Stop them damn pictures."
Not just yet. Historians, biographers, cartoonists and comedians were asked last week how they would draw some Presidents -- if they could draw. The images they chose: GEORGE WASHINGTON Dorothy Twohig, director and editor of the papers of George Washington
Oatmeal or hominy grits, because they're down to earth and he had no teeth and they're the simple kind of things people ate in the 18th century. Or maybe Cap'n Crunch, because he had a military career. But he might have had trouble crunching. HARRY S. TRUMAN
David McCullough, author, "Truman"
Harry Truman was a swallow of Wild Turkey: reliable, bracing and very American; strong, with character, 100 proof, the real thing. And if Truman ever took a sip, he swallowed. JOHN F. KENNEDY
Richard Reeves, author, "President Kennedy: Profile of Power"
A pair of aviator sunglasses. There was something dashing and glamorous about them, but you also didn't know what was going on behind them. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Carol Leifer, comedian
A black Bic pen. The cap looks like a stovepipe hat and he was tall and thin and he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Even in the Lincoln Memorial, for such a beloved President, he looks so miserable, you feel like handing him a six-pack and saying, "Hey, Abe Lincoln, it's Miller time." RICHARD M. NIXON
James Shenton, professor of history, Columbia University
A glass of grapefruit juice, sour but invigorating. When Nixon was at his most sour, he was the most interesting.
I've always regarded grapefruit juice as a great dentifrice. It's the only way you can actually have your breakfast juice and clean your teeth without much of an effort. That's what I think of when I think of Mr. Nixon. GERALD R. FORD
Richard Reeves, author, "A Ford, Not a Lincoln"
A 2-by-4. He was both solid and stolid and held things together and the roof didn't fall in, for which I give him more credit than in 1975, when I wrote that book and had him as Bozo the Clown. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Geoffrey C. Ward, author of "Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt" and "A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin D. Roosevelt"
That cigarette holder that he had, which was a sort of indicator of his mood, usually upbeat and optimistic. JAMES MONROE
Harry Ammon, retired professor, Southern Illinois University, and biographer of Monroe
A puff of smoke, rather vague. He had no literary style. His letters are difficult to read. He so befuddled and obscured an issue that it ceased to be controversial. WOODROW WILSON
August M. Heckscher, author, "Woodrow Wilson"
A box of Grape-Nuts. They are hard and crackly and good for the health. Wilson was a hard man to deal with. He had his own ideas and he carried them out somewhat rigidly. He wasn't an easy man to caricature. Wilson himself used to joke about his lack of good looks. He had a rhyme: "My face I don't mind it, because I'm behind it; it's the people out front that I jar." JIMMY CARTER
Pat Oliphant, syndicated cartoonist
A can of spinach: you don't expect much, but he turned out to be a better President out of office than he was in office.
When he was President, the way I drew him, he got smaller and smaller and smaller. His feet didn't touch the floor. And the teeth. He changed the part of his hair and then he tried to talk without showing his teeth.
Drawings: Presidential images: Truman, left, as whisky; Ford, a 2-by-4; Wilson, Grape-Nuts; Washington, oatmeal. (pg. C1); Garry Trudeau says he took a cue from readers and drew President Clinton as a waffle. (pg. C6)