Jul 22, 2017 3 min read

Politics ain’t beanbag, as we were first informed in an 1895 newspaper column, and by extension neither are the political cartoons that have graced opinion pages since the 1700s.

Arguments made by columnists and judgments rendered by a newspaper’s editorial board can lead readers to write and call to express their support or opposition, but the cartoons that appear on this page pack a visceral punch that just about any reader with a basic awareness of current events can grasp. A seventh-grader who is just gaining an understanding of the world outside of home and school can comprehend the point being made in a political cartoon, as can a 95-year-old who can recall times most of us only know from history books.

Over the years, we have occasionally received complaints from readers about the cartoons that we publish. More recently, some readers have complained about how cartoons that have appeared on this page have approached President Trump. Some have suggested that they are disrespectful to the president or the presidency itself, or hateful or toxic.

We disagree. Political cartoons are a longstanding component of our democratic dialogue.

First, Trump is a ripe target for cartoonists, thanks to his conduct during the 2016 campaign and how he has continued to comport himself in the Oval Office. Some might find his Twitter musings to be refreshingly off-the-cuff and straightforward. Others might find them to be unhinged and unpresidential, the expressions of someone with an inability to restrain his worst impulses. And, like it or not, his approval ratings are middling-to-poor, controversies and investigations are swirling around him and, after big promises made during the campaign, his agenda is stuck in sludge. All of this is ripe territory for satirists and caricaturists working in any medium, whether it is cartoons or “Saturday Night Live.”

Above all, presidents have always been the subject of political cartoons, even those we now revere and whom historians hold up as being among our very best.

George Washington was portrayed as a toadstool. Andrew Jackson as a wanna-be monarch. Woodrow Wilson as a pedantic classroom lecturer. Jimmy Carter as toothy and self-righteous. Benjamin Harrison as a dwarf unable to measure up to his grandfather, William Henry Harrison.

Let’s not forget Abraham Lincoln, who was depicted in some cartoons as a half-wit, a orangutan and a defiler of the Constitution while the Civil War raged.

And how about Richard Nixon who was always depicted as scowling, with a furrowed brow, five o’clock shadow and a ski-jump nose.

In “The Art of Ill Will,” a history of political cartoons published by New York University Press in 2007, author Donald Dewey noted Nixon was such a favorite subject for cartoonists that they jumped on any opportunity to resurrect him in the years after he left the White House: “Even in private life, … he continued to beckon as the Godfather, Darth Vader and other Hollywood villains of the moment.”

So, no one should weep for the White House’s current occupant. Despite his boo-hooing that “no politician in history” has been treated worse than he has, the way cartoonists have regarded him has really been par for the course.