Ronald Reagan

Twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan ordered American troops to invade Grenada and liberate the island from its ruling Marxist dictator. By itself this would have been an insignificant military action: Grenada is a tiny island of little geopolitical significance. But in reality the liberation of Grenada was a historic event, because it signaled the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine and inaugurated a sequence of events that brought down the Soviet empire itself.

The Brezhnev Doctrine stated simply that once a country went Communist, it would stay Communist. In other words, the Soviet empire would continue to advance and gain territory, but it would never lose any to the capitalist West. In 1980, when Reagan was elected president, the Brezhnev Doctrine was a frightening reality. Between 1974 and 1980, while the United States wallowed in post-Vietnam angst, 10 countries had fallen into the Soviet orbit: South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, South Yemen, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada and Afghanistan. Never had the Soviets lost an inch of real estate to the West.

REAGAN POLITICAL CARTOONS

Art Wood, an award-winning political cartoonist himself, collected more than 16,000 political cartoons by hundreds of the leading creators of the 'ungentlemanly art,' a phrase that is commonly used to describe this type of graphic satire. He used the word “illustration” to describe the enormous talent and craft that went into a work of art produced to capture a moment in time. From the nineteenth century's Gilded Age to recent times, political illustrations have appeared in magazines, editorial pages, opinion pages, and even on the front pages of American newspapers. These visual editorials reflect multiple viewpoints conveyed by a wide variety of artistic approaches, including the classic cross hatching techniques of Harper's Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast, the sweeping brush work of Ding Darling, the rich crayon line work of Rube Goldberg and Bill Mauldin, and the painterly styles of contemporary cartoonists Paul Conrad and Patrick Oliphant. The broad spectrum of political perspectives informs our understanding not only of the past but also of the presen

t.

Conrad also did some notable cartoons on Ronald Reagan.  In fact, he first took after Reagan in the 1960s when Reagan was governor of California.  Conrad’s cartoons often had Reagan in over his head, and he sometimes cast him as a clown.  Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler reportedly received a number of early-morning calls from Reagan or Nancy complaining of Conrad’s portrayals.  But after Reagan became President, Conrad continued his lampooning.  He once had president shown as “Reagan Hood,” stealing from the poor to give to the rich.  Another, shown at left, had Ronald and Nancy Reagan in a send up of Grant Wood’s classic American Gothic pose, made during the 1980s farm crisis when thousands of farm families were losing their farms to foreclosures, and as some charged, to Reagan policies.  Conrad also skewered Reagan’s foreign policies; one cartoon had the president in a bathtub playing with warships and a rubber duck.  In 1993, Conrad accepted a buyout from the Los Angeles Times,  but he continued to draw syndicated cartoons for more than 15 years.

South Carolina has become a primary election state in recent years and, in 1980, a sputtering Ronald Reagan presidential campaign was being bested by George Bush in the early going. Many South Carolinians supported Texan John Connally, but Carroll Campbell signed on to chair the Reagan campaign in the state and helped deliver a major primary victory to Reagan. Most of these cartoons had a big impact on the lives of the presidents themselves.