Herblock Gallery
Herblock Looks at 1973: Fifty Years Ago in Editorial Cartoons

Herblock humorously represented the Nixon administration as a thief, coming in the night to steal the constitutional powers of Congress to declare war, investigate the executive branch, and control the budget. Although Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson had wielded exceptional presidential power, Nixon faced a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party on the eve of a Senate investigation into the Watergate break-in. Believing that the Constitution granted him executive privilege, Nixon and his administration pushed back against Congress.

By showing the White House awash in a tidal wave and using a direct quote from President Nixon as a title, Herblock expressed his opinion that Nixon doomed his presidency when he promised to suspend any government employee indicted by a federal grand jury. Herblock wrote that, “[Nixon] made a series of statements and television appearances designed to turn back the rising tide of ‘Watergate’ problems.” This is the first in a series of cartoons Herblock drew on the theme of rising flood waters in the White House.

By featuring two grocery shoppers with a nearly empty cart, Herblock visually depicted the impact inflation had on American consumers. In a Herculean effort to control both domestic and import prices, the Nixon administration issued a freeze on prices. Although the price control system had been popular with consumers, it led to shortages of foods and goods. Under Phase IV of the Nixon administration’s program, prices surged.

Herblock used a shivering consumer to comment on the effect of oil shortages after the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) suspended shipments to the United States in October 1973. As consumer demand outstripped supply, selling petroleum products became increasingly profitable. At the same time, oil company executives testified before the Senate Watergate Committee about political donations made to the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Federal judges imposed misdemeanor fines on executives who complied with the re-election committee’s demands to donate to Nixon’s campaign.

During the oil embargo in late 1973, gas stations shuttered their facilities as supplies dwindled. Herblock pointed out that money spent on highways could be better spent on mass transit, which benefitted cities by reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. However, Congress stripped rail investment from the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1973, which it passed before the oil crisis. At the end of the year, Congress voted for mass transit funding, but anticipated that President Nixon intended to veto it.

Herblock expressed his opinion that the Paris Peace Accords between National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and his Hanoi counterpart, Le Duc Tho, had failed to stop the horror that befell North Vietnam. By depicting a red cross, the international symbol for hospitals, Herblock may have been referring to the multiple attacks on the Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi during Operation Linebacker II in December 1972. Convinced that he could force North Vietnam back to peace negotiations through sustained bombing, President Nixon angered the world.

Published on the eve of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973, Herblock suggested that the olive branch in its protective enclosure amid rubble offered hope. However, peace turned out to be elusive; fighting continued.

President Nixon announced the Paris Peace Accords using the words “peace with honor,” which Herblock used ironically in this cartoon about the resumption of bombing in Laos and Cambodia just before Easter Sunday 1973. The Nixon administration argued that North Vietnam had violated the cease fire by pushing into both countries, and that– in the name of stopping the spread of communism–it needed to act. Writing in the Washington Post, journalist Murrey Marder noted, “it is Nixon administration policy to bomb to achieve an effective cease-fire.”

Under the Nixon administration, bombing in Southeast Asia increased to the point that it mobilized the American anti-war movement and Cambodian anti-American sentiment. In an attempt to right the balance of power, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution to reaffirm its authority to declare war and appropriate military funding. Congress also prohibited the use of federal funds for the war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after August 15, 1973. Herblock looked ahead and foresaw an intense bombing campaign, and imagined gleeful administration officials.

As the United States government began bombing Viet Cong strongholds in South Vietnam, Herblock imagined a conversation about the OAPEC oil embargo to the United States between two villagers surrounded by downed airplanes, jeeps, barrels, and other detritus of war.

Reacting to the epidemic level of flu cases in January 1973, Herblock repurposed a cartoon drawing that he had published in reaction to a flu epidemic in 1968 in which he had used alcohol as a metaphor. Dubbed the “London Flu” by the press, the 1972–1973 outbreak was not as severe as the 1968 pandemic but still led to somewhere between 6,000 and 23,000 deaths from the flu and pneumonia.

By showing business people aloft in a hot air balloon having hooked a consumer who frowns at “living costs,” Herblock compared differing expectations between those who made goods and those who had to pay for them. Economists, in looking back, acknowledged that wholesale prices did not rise as much as consumer goods, leading to larger business profits. A combination of high international demand and bad weather led to skyrocketing food prices in January 1973.

Arguing that increasing the minimum wage from $1.60 to $2 was inflationary, President Nixon vetoed congressional legislation. Herblock contrasted a low-wage worker anchored to the floor and stretched by inflationary prices with the cocktail-drinking businessman standing next to the president. Given that inflation had driven up the cost of living 35% since the previous minimum wage increase in 1967, union leaders reacted, calling the veto, “a callous, cruel blow to the worst paid workers in America.” Under pressure of increasing inflation, Nixon acquiesced to the increase in 1974.

Before the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) imposed an embargo on the United States on October 19, 1973, oil companies waged an internal war on independent gas stations. Independent stations had been purchasing excess gasoline not sold to branded stations. Producers imposed supply limitations to support their own brands of gasoline, which forced hundreds of independent stations, mostly in rural areas, to close. Herblock juxtaposed advertisements for large vehicles with the lack of available gasoline.

When the White House requested to further delay implementation of the Clean Air Act of 1970 controls on automobile pollutants, Herblock used the visual metaphor of President Nixon tossing a bag of garbage into the face of a hiker. The automobile industry wanted to delay installation of catalytic converters on tailpipes, which put it in direct conflict with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Nixon had created the EPA in 1970.

In 1973, Nixon addressed the nation seeking congressional legislation to restore the death penalty after the Supreme Court had ruled it “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Constitution. Nixon also called for longer sentences, castigating “permissive judges.” At the same time, he invoked the privilege of “executive power” to prevent his counsel, John W. Dean III, from testifying during the Senate nomination hearing for FBI director L. Patrick Gray III. Herblock used the visual metaphor of a garbage can to express his opinion.

Republican Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut opened the televised Senate Watergate hearings on May 17, 1973, with the statement, “So the story to come has its significance not in the acts of men breaking, entering, and bugging the Watergate, but in the acts of men who almost stole America.” Herblock, too, compared the somber hearings with the celebratory victory six months earlier, using the term “election return” not as a vote tally but as a moment to consider the machinations affecting the electoral process.

On August 29, 1973, as Richard Nixon resisted handing over his Oval Office tapes, Judge John Sirica, Chief Judge of the United States District Court in Washington, DC, ordered their release to him for review before deciding whether to turn over to the grand jury. The Nixon administrative invoked “executive privilege” and a constitutional doctrine of separation of powers, but failed to persuade both Sirica—and upon appeal, the Supreme Court. Herblock approved of the judge’s decision, seeing as one of the cartoon’s proposed titles suggested, “government of laws.”

Using a plumber as an allusion to the break-in at the Democratic National Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel the previous year, Herblock depicted the efforts to which the Nixon administration went—unsuccessfully—to hide corruption and scandal. As testimony to the Senate showed, the Nixon administration was complicit in a number of illegal reelection schemes and other actions that abused executive power and undermined the electoral process.

As testimony to the Senate Committee increasingly implicated President Richard Nixon in the Watergate break-in, as well as other election scandals, the president resolutely denied involvement. In a television speech on August 15, 1973, he insisted that he had made no offers of executive clemency to those involved in the break-in, despite testimony to the contrary. Here, Herblock turned the tables on the president’s speech, having him facing a mirror and offering himself a pardon with the evidence of his illegal actions surrounding him.

Pen used by Herbert L. Block (Herblock). Gift of Brian Noyes, 2010. Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (011.00.00)