Political Cartoons

POLITICAL CARTOONS FEATURE a predominantly visual representation of a contemporary event or issue. Cartoon images typically simplify issues into an image in a single panel, and they encapsulate complex ideas with icons and symbols. Political cartoons have often played the role of critic, and track political campaign events, as do other mass media. The impact of political cartoons is not necessarily a direct effect on persuading a reader on a vote choice, but rather on stimulating discussion and possible debate on issues and candidates.

Political cartoons in the United States date back to Benjamin Franklin's image in 1754, “Join or Die,” in the Pennsylvania Gazette. The woodcut image contained a snake cut into eight pieces, representing eight early colonial governments, and was based on the superstition that a snake that was cut in two would come back to life if the pieces were rejoined by sunset. Thomas Nast was a famous cartoonist for Harper's Weekly in the 1870s, and was best known for attacking William “Boss” Tweed and bringing attention to the corruption of Tammany Hall, the political machine led by Tweed that ran New York.

While political cartoons are published on a daily basis in most U.S. newspapers, politics are frequently the focus of cartoon images, as are campaigns and elections, during local, state, and, particularly, national elections for president. To the extent that politics are a primary focus of current events, they are equally a primary focus of political cartoon images. Similar to news stories and other opinion-based coverage, political cartoons track political campaigns through all stages from candidate announcement, to Election Day, to Inauguration Day

Although politicians and candidates are the focus of critique in political cartoon images during election cycles, there have been some contemporary instances of more positive relationships between politicians and cartoonists. For example, while running for re-election in 1996, Bill Clinton invited Atlanta Journal Constitution cartoonist Mike Luckovich aboard Air Force One, and the two took turns drawing cartoon images of each other. In 2004, both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee featured political cartoons around the time of their respective party conventions.

The July 2, 1904, Cleveland Journal ran this cartoon while most New York papers panned the Republican, Roosevelt, who won.

The number of full-time political cartoonists has declined from more than 200 in the 1980s, to fewer than 100 in the early 2000s, partly because of technological developments, media ownership, and syndication. Technology permitted cartoonists' work to arrive for publication sooner than traditional delivery methods, so that images can now be sent instantaneously over the internet to numerous newspapers. Newspaper chains may feature the same cartoonists in a number of papers, and some newspapers have abandoned having their own political cartoonists and feature only syndicated editorial cartoons.

Political cartoons do not follow the principles of objectivity expected in news stories, but express opinions oftent parallel newspaper editorial and opinion columns. While some cartoons rely on considerable text to convey the opinion, many cartoons feature almost entirely visual messages. Given the brief time newspaper readers may pause to read a political cartoon, an image that is visually-based and easily understood and interpreted by a reader has a greater likelihood of capturing attention and being remembered.

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