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How to Draw President George W. Bush
By Daryl Cagle | January 13th, 2009 | PERMALINK
Political cartoonists are not much different from comic strip cartoonists; both draw an ongoing daily soap opera featuring a regular cast of characters. While comic strip cartoonists invent their own characters, the political cartoonist’s characters are given to him by events in the world. For the past eight years, political cartoonists have been drawing little daily sagas starring the same main character, President Bush. Most people won’t miss Bush as a president, but we should all miss him as a great cartoon character.
Around the world, cartoonists almost always draw President Bush as a cowboy. Outside America, a Texas cowboy is seen as: uneducated, ill mannered, a “trigger-happy marshal” or outlaw who is prone to violence. Cowboy depictions of the president by worldwide cartoonists are meant to be insults, but Americans see cowboys differently. In the USA, cowboys are noble, independent souls, living a romantic lifestyle by taming the wilderness and taking matters into their own hands whenever they see a wrong that needs to be righted. We are a nation of wanna-be cowboys.
The image of President Bush evolves with each cartoonist’s personal perspective. Back in 2000, Bush started out as most political cartoon characters start out, as a caricature of a real person, meant to be recognizable from a photograph. The cartoonists soon stopped looking at photographs and started doing drawings of drawings, then drawings of drawings of drawings, so that the George W. Bush drawings morphed into strangely deformed characters that looked nothing like the real man, but are instantly recognizable because we’ve come to know the drawings as a symbol of the man. It is surprising that each cartoonist’s drawings of the president look entirely different, but each is easily recognizable as representing the same character.
For most cartoonists, the president’s ears have grown huge; a strange phenomenon, since the president doesn’t have unusually large ears, and isn’t well known for listening. Some cartoonists have seen President Bush shrink in height; a combination of these has the president sometimes looking like a little bunny rabbit. Barack Obama’s cartoon ears have also begun to grow in cartoons, for no good reason – maybe big ears are the cartoon presidential curse of the new millennium.
The president who shrank most in cartoons was Jimmy Carter. At the end of Carter’s term he was a Munchkin, standing below knee height on almost every cartoonist’s drawing table. President Bush shrank for only the more liberal cartoonists early on, but is short for all of us at the end of his term. President Reagan grew taller during his cartoon term in office. President Clinton grew fatter, even as he lost weight in real life. Bill Clinton’s personality was fat, and the cartoonists drew the personality rather than the man. President Clinton is now skinny, but he will always be fat in cartoons.
Another cartoon characteristic that has grown from years of drawing President Bush are his eyes, two little dots, close together, topped by raised, quizzical eyebrows. The close, dotted eyes are an interesting universal phenomenon, shared by almost every cartoonist, that doesn’t relate to the president’s actual features. Over time, most cartoonists will draw a character with eyes that grow larger, but President Bush’s eyes shrink, while his ears grow. There may be a political message in that, but I can’t figure it out.
I once played “Political Cartoonist Name That Tune.” The game went like this:
“I can draw President Bush in SIX LINES.”
“Well, I can draw President Bush in FOUR LINES!”
“I can draw President Bush in THREE LINES!”
“OK. Draw that President!”
…and I did, two little dots topped by a raised, quizzical eyebrow line. It looked just like him.
Now I need to learn how to draw Obama with three lines; it may take me eight years to do it.
Comments
Comment from Randy Burge
Time January 13, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Cartoonists stretch and shrink politicians and their political realities like so much silly putty. In the end this error, we squeeze the shape into a ball and start fresh. Your exploration of the evolutionary caricatures regarding presidential cartoons was most illuminating and spot on.
Comment from euonymous
Time January 13, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Super analysis. Always wondered why foreign cartoonist thought that drawing Americans as cowboys would insult us. A case of \"unclear on the concept\" surely. Would like to see GWB in 3 lines… I would have thought you\’d need the nose which is always a prominent GWB cartoon feature. (Also a fan of using Name That Tune as a way of indicating an abbreviation for something not having to do with music! But that\’s what cartoonists do anyway…. abbreviate) And I don\’t get the ears, either. Maybe it\’s an aesthetic balance thing.
Comment from snoe
Time January 13, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Love this, nice job. I always thought drawing big ears in politics was a rule of thumb.
Comment from cagle
Time January 13, 2009 at 6:04 pm
I feel the peer pressure to draw big ears.
Comment from askcherlock
Time January 14, 2009 at 10:27 am
Bush sweeping the dirt under the American flag. How painfully clever. This cartoon also sums up his recent retrospective interviews.
Comment from Paul K
Time January 15, 2009 at 9:56 am
The dots for eyes makes sense both because he squints a lot and because he seems to see very little of reality. The big ears sort of makes sense because he seems to listen but not hear; watch any press conference of his to see what I mean.
The Cowboy thing is fascinating.
Comment from JD
Time January 15, 2009 at 10:46 am
It is hard to draw a Moron, you sure did a good job on \\"W\\\’ the way he swept everything under the carpet.
We now need a drawing of him and all of his cronies who have raped ,robbed and pillaged our country.
Comment from Papa Smurf
Time January 15, 2009 at 10:51 am
Beady eyes sure depict this guy Bush. I agree whole heartedly that comment J.D. has made about him being a Moron and how he and his greedy /corrupt henchmen have bankrupted our America .
Comment from DeMann
Time January 15, 2009 at 11:41 am
Fascinating analysis! However, I think that the final resultant Bush cartoon character reflects just that: a sick joke of a president. The beady little cross-eyes, the bat ears, the throglodyte mouth and jaw (usually with a brainless crooked smile), the low and bent stature all suggest the current perception of a sad little petulant moronic gnome with delusions of grandeur. The fact that this charicature is IMMEDIATELY recognizable EVERYWHERE across the globe just illustrates the universality of this clear perception. A truly sad reflection of what our presidential leadership has become. In contrast, Obama is still a towering messianic figure worldwide. I imagine he will shrink somewhat as well, as his perception comes into line with this reality. I only hope he never sinks as low…
Comment from Les X Brugere
Time January 15, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Another take on Bush’s metamorphosis:
The large dracula-like ears depict his creepy persona.
The beady eyes? His narrow, myopic view of the world.
Shrinkage in height ? His reduced stature and popularity among mankind.
The cowboy with toy guns and slingshots? An armed, arrogant buffoon attempting to “Remember the Alamo!”.
Comment from Mason P
Time January 15, 2009 at 2:48 pm
I think George W. Bush is a good man but a not-so-good president. We\’ve had similar presidents in U.S. history before — Ulysses S. Grant was a better war general than a president.
Of course, it is the job of political cartoonists to poke fun at political figures, but when the world shares the same less-than-positive perception of Bush as these cartoonists, it only goes to show how influential cartoonists can be. Obama has been viewed as a sort of messiah (as others have suggested) worldwide, partly because he\’s a change from Bush and partly because this is a historical moment in the U.S. presidency. I\’m thinking it won\’t take long for cartoonists to start poking fun at Obama (again, because it\’s their job) and the rest of the country (and the world) will follow suit.
Comment from Ian McKee
Time January 15, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Somehow, I don\’t think cartoonists are at all responsible for the world\’s perception of Bush. His actions and demeanor were sufficient to accomplish that.
Cartoonists echo and emphasize reality, not the other way around.
Comment from Eric
Time January 15, 2009 at 6:51 pm
I’ve long been baffled by the eyes and nose, while I thought the outrageous ears were standard in all political cartoons, but I guess that isn’t true. Nixon had some pretty exceptionally exaggerated caricatures, too, but nowhere near the complete metamorphosis of Dubya.
Height is another interesting thing, as he’s actually much taller than he is ever depicted or envisioned. Even television images seem to make him look short, which remains a mystery.
I feel sorry for political cartoonists with Obama, since he’s like Cheney in that he lacks anything distinguishing to exaggerate. No wonder they started growing Obama’s ears so quickly. Maybe they’ll get a lot of mileage out of the numbskull VP, since he is a great cartoon subject and constantly produces high-grade political cartoon material just by opening his mouth…
Comment from Steve Furman
Time January 15, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Thanks for that new perspective. Hadn\’t thought about it like that before. Personally, I\’m happy you guys can all move on to a new subject. What a nightmare.
Comment from John Carter
Time January 15, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Will the muslim headgear cover obama’s ear size ?
Comment from Pierce Presley
Time January 15, 2009 at 9:23 pm
And you couldn\’t demonstrate the metamorphosis visually WHY?
Comment from BKDub
Time January 15, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I’m west coast …. forth generation socal native … and my dad used to use the term “cowboy” in a VERY derogatory vein …. similar to “okie”, only worse in his vocabulary.
Comment from borges
Time January 15, 2009 at 10:37 pm
I thought it was always about Alfred E Newman. That’s the way I thought everyone started with Bush and it led to the always big ears thing. That early analysis of him as an AE Newman character was prescient in my estimation. I won’t miss the cartoons or the character in the White House.
Comment from cagle
Time January 15, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Pierce Presley Writes:
And you couldn\’t demonstrate the metamorphosis visually WHY?
You can see my personal Bush metamorphosis here: http://cagle.com/news/CagleBushYears
It is troubling to look back on my awkward old Bush drawings from the beginning.
-Daryl
Comment from Dennis R
Time January 16, 2009 at 6:29 am
To give most of us an image to dream about, could you depict Bush as a convicted war criminal . . . please?
Comment from Marie
Time January 16, 2009 at 6:57 am
The ears reminded me of a donkey’s. Then I began to think of Pinnochio who had similar ears. Maybe Bush’s cartoon image personified his journey to become a “real” boy, man, president?
Comment from david7533
Time January 18, 2009 at 5:14 am
zed your ALL HAT NO CATTLE should have been a bumper-sticker in 2000
Comment from Chivers
Time January 18, 2009 at 6:15 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....eorge-bush
Try this link for a commentary by Steve Bell on exactly this subject. Bell is a respected left-wing British political cartoonist.
I loved your article. Thanks from England.
Comment from Jennifer
Time January 13, 2009 at 11:43 am
wow.. thanks for the information.. had to chuckle about the cowboy / international comments. Very true and experienced that when abroad. nice “new” blog too! (from Twitter!) Cheers!