There was another cartoon that stuck with me -- the one whose refrain was "Bomb Iraq." The first panel was "If you can't find the guy you're after -- bomb Iraq."
Right, "What the president has learned in a year since Sept. 11."
THIS ARTICLE
"The Great Big Book of Tomorrow: A Treasury of Cartoons"
By Tom Tomorrow
St. Martin's208 pages
Nonfiction
Yes, if you have a problem, bomb Iraq. One of the panels was about Enron. Where did Enron go?
Yeah, that one fell off the map, didn't it? I really misjudged that one -- I thought that would have legs. I don't know. Where that went was to the back page and the business page. We had a couple of wars. It was pretty much as the cartoon suggested: The president started talking about bombing Iraq and everyone's attention was drawn away from Enron.
Do you feel more responsibility to what issues you're grappling with or with what's in the headlines?
I've never really cared about that. And that's really the big difference between the Bush and Clinton years. More and more I am more likely to be talking about what everyone is talking about because everyone is talking about things that matter. Also, I'm not a daily cartoonist -- those guys are getting up in the morning, coming up with the idea, talking to their editors about it, going through the whole process, drawing it, getting it to the copy desk -- all in five hours. So they are going to be talking about whatever is on the front page -- that's their job. I have the luxury of going off on tangents. But lately the tangents have been less interesting than the news.
You focus a lot on the evasiveness of this administration. But wasn't that true during the Clinton administration?
The stakes weren't as high. The civil liberties situation is terrifying. And the foreign policy situation ... this is the most radical presidential administration probably in a century. And unfortunately, it's trite to say it, but Sept. 11 really did change everything in one important way: It unleashed this administration to pursue its most radical agenda. On the afternoon of Sept. 11, Donald Rumsfeld is sitting in his office writing memos trying to figure out how they can use Sept. 11 to justify attacking Iraq. On Sept. 11, 2001. And there's a reason for that -- Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Perle, all those Project for the New American Century guys, have been publicly advocating war with Iraq since the mid '90s. They issued policy statements saying that we need a foothold in the region that's more reliable than Saudi Arabia and Iraq is our best opportunity. This has all been out in the open.
Do conservatives accuse you of enjoying all this controversy?
You hear that. It's beneath contempt. I would happily go back to humorously discussing why Clinton's trade policy was a mistake in a wacky four-panel cartoon. This is serious stuff. No one is enjoying this. I'm not trying to score debating points, I'm just angry.
I thought it was interesting that in 1992, when Clinton was elected, someone said to you, Well, what will you write about now? as if there wouldn't be anything to criticize.
Right. There were some dry patches, I'll admit. I'm afraid we may not get back to that situation for a long time.
Have you ever written positive cartoons?
Oh, come on.
I don't know. Some moment when you were overcome by a burst of cheerfulness?
It is not a frequent occurrence. But I wouldn't do what I do if there wasn't an inherent optimism there. It's an optimism tinged with bitterness and frustration but if I didn't believe that things can get better then I would go live in some remote farmhouse somewhere and ignore the world entirely.
About the writer
Suzy Hansen is an associate editor at Salon.
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