Pointing Their Pens: Herblock and Fellow Cartoonists Confront the Issues
Nixon

Despite Attorney General Richard Kleindienst’s promise to thoroughly investigate the break-in at the Democratic Party’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., Herblock blamed both Kleindienst and President Nixon for covering up the scandal. Just days after Nixon was nominated by the Republican Party in Miami Beach, Florida, the U.S. Government Accountability Office announced that the president’s reelection committee had violated the Federal Election Campaign Act. Herblock shared a Pulitzer Prize with fellow Washington Post colleagues Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein for their Watergate coverage in 1973.

A month after the Senate began its televised Watergate hearings, revelations regarding the extent of the cover-ups astounded Americans. Herblock found in the layers of rugs in the White House Oval Office a perfect metaphor. At the time he published this cartoon, several participants in the scandal had admitted to the investigating committee that they had been asked to commit perjury.

In this cartoon published after the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, President Richard Nixon and Vice-President Spiro Agnew ask a Democratic Party donkey, drunk on the contents of a bottle labeled “Old McGovern,” to repent and join their bandwagon. In his acceptance speech, Nixon courted Democrats, telling them to “join a new American majority.” Ultimately, Nixon won a landslide victory in 1972.

During the 1972 presidential campaign, Democratic Party candidate George McGovern ran against President Nixon’s corruption, and it backfired. In the final weeks before the election, voters found the Democrat untrustworthy. Here, Washington Star cartoonist Gib Crockett castigated McGovern for his negativity, hinting that his reputation was no better than Nixon’s by depicting him equally splattered with paint.

Much to the amazement of cartoonist Herc Ficklen’s Texas longhorn, President Nixon appears to have superhuman capabilities as he flies above the scandals that erupted in the months leading up to the 1972 presidential election. Jack “Herc” Ficklen, having earned the nickname Hercules after a childhood feat of strength, spent thirty years cartooning at the Dallas Morning News.

Four days after the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., Herblock blamed President Nixon; former Attorney General John Mitchell, who then headed the Nixon reelection committee; and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst for the burglary and numerous other scandals. Address books found on the suspects led Democratic National Committee Chairman Lawrence O’Brien to point a finger at the White House, and he filed a lawsuit against the Committee to Reelect the President.

In the final days leading up to the presidential election on November 7, 1972, evidence increasingly revealed President Nixon’s involvement in a number of scandals, including the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. The Republican Party stood by their candidate and castigated the Democrats for their mud-slinging. Herblock’s Nixon appears almost saintly as hands lift him above his scandals.

Nixon-supporter Gib Crockett of the Washington Star offered a backyard scene to send a message to his readers to relax and take it easy. Watergate is half-forgotten in the unmowed yard. Despite the Senate investigation into the Watergate scandal that had the country glued to the television, his John Q. Public is unmoved and unwavering in support of President Nixon.

Like many Nixon supporters, Karl Hubenthal expressed dismay and shock that Nixon’s credibility has been erased with the release of the Watergate tapes. On April 29, 1974, Nixon began to release his secret White House recordings, but the release of the transcripts of a conversation he held with White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman six days after the break-in forced even his most ardent supporters to admit there was a cover-up. Hubenthal, who drew for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner for twenty-seven years, published this cartoon the day before Nixon resigned from the presidency.

Even as Congress moved to impeach President Nixon for his involvement in the 1972 Democratic Party headquarters break-in at the Watergate Hotel, he still attempted to thwart prosecution. Some of his biggest supporters began to call for his resignation. Ed Holland, who drew cartoons for the Chicago Tribune for twenty-three years, quoted the Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott and depicted Nixon trapped by a web of his own deception.