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Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist of the Lexington Herald-Leader. His work also appears in USA Today.
There’s a reason caricature is called the ungentlemanly art: It’s downright rude. If there’s a lower road than lampooning someone’s physical features in pursuit of a political posture, please tell me so I can travel it.
After a while, a president can be reduced to just one or two features: Richard Nixon’s unibrow and ski-jump nose, Ronald Reagan’s wavy pompadour, Jimmy Carter’s teeth. Editorial cartoonists long ago settled on our various Dubya depictions. As you see on this page, they range from the somewhat straightforward treatments of Pat Oliphant and Tony Auth, to the goofier offerings of Jack Ohman and Tom Toles, to (my favorite) the outrageous and devastating banana-republic “Generalissimo” of Ted Rall.