Januaries '4eign and Domestic

It's time to ease back on the wayback machine just a little bit, so here are a few cartoons I drew in Januaries of years ending in -4. (Which was coincidentally the high temperature here the other day.)

1984 was a presidential election year, of course; and like today, the United States was bedeviled by hostilities in the Middle East.

The U.S.S. John F. Kennedy had been on patrol off the coast of Lebanon after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in which 241 soldiers had died. In response to some hostile fire, the JFK launched a bombing raid on December 4. The plane of Navy Lts. Mark Lange and Robert Goodman was shot down by a Syrian ground missile. Lange did not survive; Goodman was taken captive in Damascus.

Unwilling to accede to the conditions set by Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad that the U.S. withdraw forces from Lebanon, the Reagan Administration's efforts to win Goodman's freedom were getting nowhere. Then a delegation led by by Rev. Jesse Jackson went to Damascus, and Jackson, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, succeeded where Reagan had failed.

Jackson nevertheless came in seventh place in the Iowa caucuses. Go figure. Must have been because there are no naval bases in Iowa.

I drew the above cartoon for the January 12, 1984 edition of the University of Wisconsin - Parkside student newspaper; but they still had an unused cartoon from December and ran that one instead.

Moving on to 1994, and the aftermath of more U.S. soldiers killed in a far-off civil war:

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Jan. 24, 1994

President Clinton's first Defense Secretary, Les Aspin, resigned at the end of 1993, tacitly taking the fall for the Blackhawk Down incident in Somalia. Clinton's nomination of Admiral Bobby Ray Inman as Aspin's replacement was greeted initially with bipartisan praise — save for New York Times columnist William Safire, who alleged that Inman was biased against Israel. 

Inman withdrew his name from consideration at a stormy press conference, where he blasted Safire and complained that Republican Senators Bob Dole and Trent Lott were out to get him. Both Senate leaders expressed surprise and shock at Inman's accusation, and the White House was taken totally off guard.

Clinton's subsequent nomination of William Perry to the post went off smoothly. There was later speculation that Inman was actually trying to head off being connected to a scandal at International Signal and Control, where he served on the board of directors.

for Q Syndicate, January, 2004

I don't have a cartoon from January of 2004 that fits with the general topic of today's post; so instead, I'll include this homage to P.T. Bridgeport, a recurring character in Walt Kelly's "Pogo" whose dialogue always appeared in late-1800's advertising fonts. 

Lettering dialogue is usually my least favorite part of drawing a cartoon. This was an exception.

for Q Syndicate, January, 2014

Returning to foreign issues, I chose this cartoon from ten years ago because it gives me an opportunity to address a cartoon I haven't drawn this month.

On December 29, the President of Burundi, Évariste Ndayishimiye, was asked about respecting LGBTQ+ rights.

"For me, I think that if we find these people in Burundi they should be taken to stadiums and be stoned, and doing so would not be a crime," he said.

If any U.S. politician had spewed such hate-filled bile in the no-news week between Christmas and New Year's, I would have been all over that story in that week's cartoon. But doing so about a politician none of my readers had ever heard of from a country that many could not find on a map (present company excepted, of course) with a history of Western colonialism and yada yada is fraught with danger.

Would it be possible to condemn Mr. Ndayishimiye without risking accusations of racism and cultural imperialism?

We could debate whether homosexuality existed in Africa before Christian and Islamic missionaries preached anti-LGBTQ+ persecution there. Western colonizers did everything they could to erase local culture and history wherever they went; yet it beggars belief to imagine that homosexuality existed only in Europe and in scattered Native American nations before Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Francis Drake set sail.

Mr. Ndayishimiye, as it happens, is Roman Catholic, but with some glaringly apparent differences with the current Pope.

My 2014 cartoon attempted to argue that institutionalized homophobia rather than homosexuality is the Western export to Africa (at least as far as Christianity is concerned). Not that I have never leveled criticism at African politicians —viz. here and e.g. here — but I don't have much of a readership in Burundi, Uganda, or Kenya.

Or anywhere else on the continent.

Lo, mbaya sana. I'm better off sticking to cartooning politicians my readers can vote for or against.

One reference to The African Queen in that regard is probably my total allotment, anyway. At least until I manage to draw a better Katherine Hepburn.

The Ghosts of Cartoons Past

Welcome to another Graphical History Tour. Let's rummage through my December cartoons from 2013, 2003, 1993, and 1983, shall we?

for Q Syndicate, December, 2013

I brought up Megan Kelly in this here blog the other day, quoting her fairly lengthy question to Chris Christie at last week's less-than-presidential debate. She accused him of being out-of-step with Republican orthodoxy and her own prejudices against transgender youth.

Ten years ago, Kelly was over at Fox Noise, whence she opined that everybody knows that Santa Claus can't possibly be Black because he's as Aryan as she is. Of course, we know from the historical record that the OG St. Nicholas was no such thing.

He was a Klingon. Qapla'!

for Q Syndicate, December, 2003

Once upon a time, I had an editor who objected to my depicting Santa Claus as gay. He was worried that it would offend readers' religious sensibilities. He had sold Q Syndicate by the time I drew this cartoon at the end of 2003, so I don't know if he would have had the same qualms about outing Old Man Time.

The editors of the Washington Blade really liked this cartoon, however, adding color and featuring it on the front page of their year-in-review issue. How I wish I had downloaded that version of the cartoon! (I had printed a screen grab of the page back then, but that piece of paper is a bit worse for wear twenty years on.) The Blade's colorizing job was an improvement over the original —cross-hatching really is no way to draw rainbow colors. But the grayscale image now in their archives is dark and muddy.

2003 was an extraordinarily good year for the LGBTQ+ community. An openly gay cleric, Rev. V. Gene Robinson, was elected Bishop Coadjudicator of the Episcopal Church New Hampshire Diocese. The original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was the most popular program on Bravo, spawning further gay-oriented "reality programming." (Chip and Reichen were a gay couple on CBS's Amazing Race; Bravo's Boy Meets Boy was a gay version of The Bachelor with the catch that some of the supposed suitors were closeted straight dudes.)

Sadly, 2004 would prove to be a year of backlash, with President George W. Bush campaigning for reelection by pledging to enshrine opposite-sex marriage exclusivity in the U.S. Constitution — and America rewarding him by making him the only Republican presidential candidate in this century to win the popular vote.

UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., Dec. 9, 1993

Skipping back another decade, I have fewer cartoons to choose from, and this may be the only one in today's post that hasn't appeared in my blog before. The student newspapers for which I drew always suspended publication in early- to mid-December for finals and winter break. Local newsmakers are busy with holiday business (as are local cartoonists), so I don't believe I drew anything for the Racine Journal Times during any of the Decembers featured here today.

The baby and the muralist in this cartoon would be millennials in their thirties today; I guess the parents might be millennials, too. If so, their family is spared having a generation gap.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Jan. 19, 1984

I drew this cartoon of the 1984 Democratic presidential candidates in December of '83 for the student newspaper of the University of Wisconsin at Parkside after the last issue of the semester had been published, so it was held over until January.

Having a plethora of official whatnots of the Olympic games was a new development in 1984. Having sponsors actually started way back in 1908 (Soup maker Oxo sponsored the London Olympics that year), and Coca-Cola has been an official sponsor ever since the 1928 Amsterdam games. But by 1984, it seemed that every other commercial on TV boasted of being the official adhesive tape, motor oil, or hemorrhoid ointment of the Olympics.

Since we're back to December of 1983, I have to close with the Christmas break episode of my crude take-off of "The Maltese Falcon" starring thinly disguised characters from the comic pages.

At this point in my story, a police detective who looked suspiciously like Dick Tracy was interrogating an out-of-work fellow you might have sworn was Mike Doonesbury — note: Garry Trudeau had put his strip on hiatus at the end of January — when a bunch of characters from one of my all-time favorite strips suddenly interrupted:

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Dec. 15, 1983

I hope you'll check back before the holidays are over; but in case we miss each other, juHqu' qechmey!

Meet the Dingbats

Last Saturday's post looked back on my abortive attempt to add a little character in my editorial cartoons giving postscriptive commentary on the topic of the day. Although I didn't keep it up, such characters are a longstanding tradition that dates back at least to the marginalia in medieval manuscripts, if not to paintings on cave walls.

In editorial cartooning, they're called dingbats, after the typesetters' term for non-alphanumeric characters used for everything from bullet points to paragraph dividers to space filler.

The best known of these in the present day was Puck, the little penguin Pat Oliphant drew at the bottom of his editorial cartoons from his early days Down Under with the Adelaide Advertiser until his retirement in 2015.

"Here I Am, the Last Livin' Person in Ireland..." by Pat Oliphant in Denver Post, ca. Feb. 18, 1973

Puck came into being after a colleague at the Adelaide Advertiser brought a penguin in a paper sack to the newspaper office. The 20-something Oliphant, whose political leanings were well to the left of his editors and the publisher at the Advertiser, began adding Puck to his cartoons as a way of sneaking his true opinions past those editors. By the time they caught onto this device, Puck's popularity with readers ensured that the penguin would continue whether the editors liked it or not.

"Now Is the Time to Save Gas" by Fred Seibel in Richmond Times Dispatch, Feb. 18, 1943

I also mentioned Fred O. Seibel and his crow last week. The crow also had a name, but sources disagree whether it is Moses or Jim. Since I have not been able to track down an origin story for him, I'll leave both names here with the caveat that I found him named Jim in a contemporary source, Moses in an article written long after Seibel had died.

"Alas Poor Yorick" by Fred Seibel in Richmond Times Dispatch, Feb. 18, 1933

Getting his start in upstate New York in 1908, Seibel was the editorial cartoonist at the Richmond (Virginia) Times Dispatch 1926 to 1968. Representing oneself with a crow named Jim would hardly raise an eyebrow at the start of his career; by 1968, and certainly by 2021 when the above-linked article was written, there was nothing quaint or cute about "Jim Crow."

"No Trespassing" by Bob Satterfield for Satterfield Cartoon Service, ca. November, 1914

Bill Rowell might have confused Seibel's crow with Bob Satterfield's bear, whose name was Moses according to Cartoons Magazine. 

The bear's name might also have been Bizzy, however. Satterfield also drew comic strips, including one starting in 1903 starring a bear named Bizzy. A typical episode of the strip, titled "Oh, Thunder," consisted of four square panels showing the bear and perhaps another cartoon animal with a four-line poem. It ran until at least 1933.

Sat's Bear (yet another of its names) was inspired by the popular tale about Teddy Roosevelt declining to kill a bear cub brought to him to shoot at. The incident inspired a famous cartoon by Clifford Berryman, and the more enduring teddy bear dolls. Berryman's bear reappeared once in a while, whereas Satterfield's bruin was a daily constant.

"Advice from One Who Knows" by Bob Satterfield in Detroit Times, ca. July, 1916

 

In 1914, another cartoonist we've featured here from time to time, John Baer, offered Satterfield $1,000 for the rights to use the bear in his cartoons. Satterfield turned down the offer, writing, “He has become an indispensable and highly honored member of our firm, and I assure you that his place could not be successfully filled by anybody else.”

"When Doctors Disagree" by R.C. Bowman in Minneapolis Tribune, Dec. 27, 1898

If you've been following my blog long enough, you are familiar with the work of Minneapolis Tribune cartoonist Rowland C. Bowman, and his little dog. 

When Bowman died in 1903 at the age of 32, the Tribune article eulogizing him explained that the dog had originally appeared as one of many characters in a Bowman cartoon celebrating a Minneapolis baseball team winning a pennant. Something about the dog appealed to readers, so Bowman kept bringing it back again and again.

"Castro Thinks the Venezuelan Trouble Is a Fuse" by R.C. Bowman in Minneapolis Tribune, Feb. 5, 1903

The dog never had a name as far as I've been able to ascertain, and never spoke a word of dialogue. Occasionally, he would be hidden in the cartoon, peering out from behind a fence for instance, resulting in letters to the editor from readers who couldn't find him, or were proud of themselves that they could.

"Willie Bryan Starts in Early" by R.C. Bowman in Minneapolis Tribune, Feb. 18, 1903

A dingbat we met just last month was William K. Patrick's wise-quacking duck.

Patrick's duck originated in the New Orleans Times-Democrat, and when the Times-Democrat merged with the New Orleans Daily Picayune in 1914, the duck took over as the dingbat in charge of reporting the weather. This put the Picayune's weatherfrog out of work after 20 years of faithful service to the Big Easy.

"Meanwhile, the Value of the Eggs" by William K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star Telegram, Feb. 1, 1923

After Patrick left New Orleans for Fort Worth, taking his duck with him, New Orleanians were left with no weathercritter telling them whether to bring an umbrella to work. That is, until 1952, when Times-Picayune editors enlisted Walt Kelly's Pogo to take the job.

The paper's readers, however, would have none of the out-of-state Okeefenokian marsupial, and voted to give the job back to the old frog, who continues his frognostications to this very day.

"What Does His Birthday Mean to You" by Wm. K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star Telegram, Feb. 22, 1923

All of which is a round-about way of telling you that I don't have any interesting tidbits to pass along about the duck itself, save that a whimsical 1918 article in Cartoons Magazine cast Patrick's duck as the colonel in charge of a convocation of cartoon dingbats assembled to pledge their support to the war effort.

in Cartoons Magazine, Chicago, August, 1918

Alas, none of us are including those beloved dingbats in our editorial cartoons any more. (Unless you count Stan Kelly.)

Perhaps that what's ailing our profession these days...

✍

Desperately Seeking Moujik

My cartoon for Q Syndicate this week featured the return of Brittney Griner and a character meant to be her Russian lawyer. When I first introduced Товарищ Юрист, I remarked that I had some difficulty figuring out how to get across visually that he, a fictional character, was meant to be Russian, and not, say, an American consular official.

Back when I was a junior high school student showing an interest in cartooning, my dad enrolled in Palmer Martino's class in cartooning at the local technical college for the specific purpose of allowing me to tag along. In one of the books for the course, this was how you are supposed to draw a Russian:

Detail from Cartooning the Head & Figure by Jack Hamm. Grosset & Dunlap, 1967

Clearly, Mrs. Griner's lawyer would not be showing up at her prison or in court looking like that guy.

If one looks instead to the movies, there were Dr. Zhivago (portrayed by an Egyptian), the Russian ambassador in Dr. Strangelove, (Peter Bull, a Brit), the crew of the submarine in Red October (led by a Scot), and Vladimir Ivanov in Moscow on the Hudson (Mork from Ork). None of them look like Jack Hamm's drawing, either, so let's turn back to cartooning:

"Samson et Delilah" by Pierre-Georges Jeanniot in Le Rire, Paris, ca. June/July, 1917

At the time of the Russian revolution, cartoonists' stereotypical Russian was the fellow with the gun in this cartoon. The French called him Moujik (from the Russian word мужи́к, peasant.) There are various transliterations in English; I'm going to stick with M. Jeanniot's spelling today.

"Sharpening the Rusty Sword" by John Cassel in New York Evening World, June 23, 1917

Here's an American cartoonist's version of M. Moujik.

In the popular imagination circa World War I, the typical Russian wore his hair long, and perhaps unkempt — or perhaps neatly combed, as in this cartoon by Dutchman Louis Raemaekers.

"A Poison Gass Attack on New Russia" by Louis Raemaekers for Philadelphia Public Ledger Co., ca. July, 1917

More common, or at least more durable, in the American imagination was this older moujik by Ted Brown:

"Set 'em Up Again" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, Nov. 10, 1917

German cartoonist Lutz Chremberger offers us four versions of M. Moujik; at that particular moment during World War I, Germans anticipated that Russia's February Revolution would necessitate the Kerensky government withdrawing from the war.

"Aus dem Toten Hause" by Lutz Chremberger in Lustige Blätter, Berlin, March 16, 1917

At the same time, Germans had another, more menacing version of M. Moujik. Another Lustige Blätter cartoonist portrays the revolutionary Duma as a doll not to be messed with.

in Lustige Blätter, March 16, 1917 (?)

This less charitable characterization is dominant in German cartoons during World War II, even when trying to minimize him.

"Dies Kind, Kein Engel Ist So Sein" by Hans-Maria Lindloff in Kladderadatsch, Berlin, Feb. 1, 1942

By the end of the war, as the German army is falling back all across the eastern front, Herr Moujik has bulked up considerably — he is even more menacing than Tsar Nicholas's plaything.

"Die Geöffnete Tür" by Ernst Schilling in Simplicissimus, Munich, Aug. 30, 1944

I notice, however, that he has lost his mop of hair. Just to confirm his new haircut, here's another from the late days of the war:

"Der Englische Koch..." by Wilhelm Schultz in Simplicissimus, Munich, Sept. 13, 1944

Contrast the brutish, balding German Moujik with one from the United States, an ally for the time being:

A Fourth for Bridge" by Melville Bernstein in PM, New York, Oct. 8, 1944

By this point, Moujik was something of a rarity in American cartoons. Russia was far more often represented by Josef Stalin or, if one was hesitant to portray Russia in a positive light, this old stand-by:

"He Hibernates Long..." by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 22, 1945

In this case, the bear is a propos; neither Moujik nor Stalin was known for habitual hibernation. As a symbol, the Russian bear goes way back, possibly to the 1500's. I do find the gratuitous "Br'er" in Carey Orr's cartoon a bit curious; but, having spent some time cartooning in Tennessee, allusions to southern folklore prolly came a tad natural-like to him.

Excerpt from "Suffern on the Steppes" in Pogo Peek-a-Book by Walt Kelly. Simon & Schuster, 1955

Speaking of Southern stuff, let's move along to our Cold War depictions of Russian folk with this example from Walt Kelly.

For "Suffern on the Steppes, or 1984 and All That," Pogo cartoonist Kelly shifted his characters from the Okefenokee to the Soviet Union for a tale drawn expressly for a comic book. To do so, he simply drew Pogo, Howland, Albert, Churchy and Beauregard in Russian costumes. He tossed in some 1984-style revisionist dialectic, a round of Russian roulette, and the occasional onion dome in the background, and Так! We're in Russia, Comrade!

"Bootstraps Gorbachev" by Pat Oliphant, July 22, 1991

By the sunset of the Soviet Union, Pat Oliphant's M. & Mme. Moujik were his prevalent image of the common tovarisch. Gone are Moujik's flowing locks, and hers are tucked safely away under her babushka. For all the reports in the West of bare grocery shelves, he and she nevertheless appear not to be starving.

I guess those bootstraps must be pretty filling after all.

Still, none of these images strike me as being quite right for my Russian lawyer character.

So let me rummage through my own cartoons for inspiration. Ah, here's a Russian couple my generation grew up with!

for Q Syndicate, July, 2013

Pish posh. We all knew where Pottsylvania really was.

Non, Je Ne Remets Rien

in UW-Milwaukee Post, April 5, 1990

Souvenirback Saturday is taking a week off from addressing Americans' historical illiteracy today, and just tossing together a handful of my cartoons from April, 1990. Aside from their being 30 years old, there's no particular theme or moral here. I just happen to like them.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, April 10, 1990

Rummaging through my files, I thought this cartoon was about Dennis Franz's butt on NYPD Blue. In case you were too young to watch NYPD Blue back in the day, the show broke network TV ground by having its central character go full dorsal, paving the way for more conventionally handsome buttcheeks to grace the boob tube in the decades since.

But NYPD Blue didn't premiere until 1993, so it wasn't that. Perhaps it was about Robert Mapplethorpe — although, to the best of my knowledge, he never had a television show.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, April 19, 1990

Russia didn't want to let go of its Baltic SSRs, and NATO leaders were reluctant to appear too eager for their independence. I like this cartoon because it gave me an opportunity to draw several world leaders together, including some, like the Prime Minister of Spain, whom I never drew before or since.

I drew this for the Racine Journal Times, but since I don't see it in the scrapbook my mother kept of my cartoons, I think they must not have used it. David was the mayor of Burlington, Wisconsin, who got caught having included a little white lie in his campaign autobiography. Sure, it didn't measure up to misappropriating Neil Kinnock's father's life story, but I thought it made for a funny cartoon.

Once upon a time, children, being caught in a lie — any lie at all, no matter how inconsequential — could spell the end of one's political career. Believe it or not.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, April 26, 1990

Speaking of stealing things: I wasn't going to include this cartoon, since even as an homage to Walt Kelly's Pogo, it wasn't particularly original. But having just made an oblique reference to a Pogo character earlier this week, it's probably a good idea to remind myself not to keep going to that well too often.

in UW-Milwaukee Post, May 1, 1990

And finally, proof that not every cartoon I drew of President George H.W. Bush was critical of him.

Sarcophagus MacAbre

In case nobody caught it, I just thought I ought to point out the subtle tribute to Walt Kelly's Pogo in Wednesday's cartoon. The scripted font in the dialogue balloon and the name of the mortuary — although I altered the spelling to look more Scottish and less French — were references to his character Sarcophagus MacAbre.

Detail of Pogo by Walt Kelly, March 17, 1970

Kelly introduced Sarcophagus into the strip fairly early on as a confederate of such nefarious rapscallions as Seminole Sam, Wiley Catt, and Molester Mole. Variously referred to as a buzzard or vulture, Sarcophagus was the resident undertaker, ever ready to welcome a new customer. Kelly often (but not always) wrote his dialogue in a bold script encased in a thick black border reminiscent of a Victorian funeral notice.

The excerpt above is a single panel from a weekday strip, and I just adore the level of detail — no benday halftones or Photoshop cut and paste here! They just don't make 'em like this any more.

So Long As She's a Gentleman

"Pogo" by Walt Kelley, March 9, 1960

Senecaback Saturday offers a break from coronavirus (save to observe that there really was a St. Corona, and she really is the patron saint of pandemics. You can make this stuff up, but why would you?).

Instead, keeping in mind that March is Women's History Month, let's consider the history of women running for president of the United States.

Partisans of Senator Elizabeth Warren have complained that her late lamented presidential campaign was doomed by sexism. She entered the race amply qualified to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Not only did she have her plans, she was every bit a lefty as Bernie Sanders but without wearing the Socialist label.

Sexism in these matters being nothing new, of course...

"The Age of Brass" by Currier and Ives, 1869

Women couldn't even vote for president until 1869, and that was only in Wyoming. Elsewhere, female suffrage was pooh-poohed as a fantastically ludicrous idea, so Wyoming had to drive a hard bargain to keep women's right to vote when the territory was admitted as a state. Nevertheless, they persisted.

"An Unexpected Effect" by Charles J. Budd in Harper's Weekly, May 18, 1912

Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (R-MT) in 1916, four years before passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. She ran unsuccessfully for the Senate two years later as a third-party candidate, losing partly because she had voted against U.S. entry into World War I. She was elected to Congress again in 1940, in time to vote against U.S. entry into World War II.

Uncaptioned, by Sidney Maxell for Guy Gannett Publishing Co., Portland, ME, October 29, 1950

In the years after ratification of the 19th Amendment (and even beforehand), a few women ran for president on minor party tickets. The first to try for the nomination of either the Republican or Democratic party was Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) in 1964. [Update: but see also here: Lucy Page Gaston was on the GOP ballot in 1920, if only in South Dakota.] Floated as a possible running mate with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, Chase Smith's high water mark in '64 was garnering 25% of the vote in the Illinois primary; placed in nomination at the GOP convention, she refused to withdraw her name from the final ballot, thus denying Barry Goldwater a unanimous nomination.

Jack Davis for Time magazine, January 31, 1972

Eight years later, Representative Shirley Chisholm (D-NY; the woman in Jack Davis's cartoon) was the second. Chisholm was less successful but won a meaningless "beauty contest" primary in New Jersey; still, she came in fourth when delegates voted at the Democratic National Convention.

"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall" by Pat Oliphant, August 25, 1987

The presidential campaign of Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-CO) in 1987 didn't get beyond the exploratory stage, sorely disappointing editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant. Oliphant has never spared complimentary cartoons lightly, so this one is a rarity. His Puck, however, unintentionally brings up a standard by which male presidential candidates are hardly ever judged.

"Doonesbury" by Garry Trudeau, May 28, 1999

Elizabeth "Liddy" Dole, a twice former cabinet secretary and the wife of retired Senator Bob Dole, declared her candidacy for the 2000 GOP nomination. She came in a distant third to heir apparent George W. Bush and Steve Forbes in the Iowa straw poll in August of 1999 and withdrew in October. She might well have been Dubya's vice president if the guy Bush put in charge of finding his running mate hadn't decided there was no better choice than the man in the mirror.

"Of Course I Do," July, 1984

Backing up a bit, and turning to my own cartoons, a woman had made it onto a major party ticket in 1984. Walter Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate. What should have been a bold, historical move was tempered by the impression that Mondale had been pressured into his choice by the National Organization of Women and the National Women's Political Caucus.

"Sarah's the One," September, 2008

John McCain didn't have that problem when he chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his VP candidate. If anything, she seemed to be more popular with Republicans than he was. Her folksy, in-your-face style wowed party regulars while striking outsiders as fairly ridiculous. The "Caribou Barbie" moniker was sexist and unfair, but oh so deliciously clever. And, frankly, no worse than Dan Quayle had to endure.

"So Happy to Be Back in Waterloo," July, 2011

Another woman who ran for the Republican nomination and earned merciless ridicule was Minnesota's Michele Bachmann. Citing various outrageous statements she had made in Congress and on the campaign trail, Chris Wallace actually asked her on Fox News Sunday, "Are you a flake?" There was, however, a moment when she was leading polls of GOP voters, and she won the 2011 Iowa straw poll — but she ended up coming in sixth in the actual caucuses there in January, and dropped out of the race.

"That Time of Year Again," February, 2007

And so we come to Hillary Clinton. Having paid her dues as First Lady and then Senator from New York, 2008 was supposed to be her year. Unfortunately, she had gained a reputation for being overly calculating. Ruining her plans, Barack Obama swept the Democratic Party, which tends to have a thing for bright, shiny, new, exciting candidates (well, not this year, obviously), off its feet.

Besides, had she won, future historians would have been puzzled why the United States decided for an entire quarter century that the best it could do were Clintons and Bushes.

"I Don't Get It," March, 2016

Eight years later, she was back as the Democrats' heiress apparent. And we know how that came out.