Finding a Face for Fritz

By Thomas Griffith

Political cartoonists across the country are having trouble drawing a bead on Fritz Mondale. Some admit that they have not "found" their Mondale face yet. Can this be an indication of Mondale's difficulty in getting himself across? Some cartoonists will tell you that it is more an occupational hazard of their own craft.

Whenever a political figure moves to front-and-center stage, cartoonists search for a stereotype of him that will be instantly recognizable to the public in whatever armor, spaceman's suit or caveman's costume the artist puts him in to get a smile or make a point. Jeff MacNelly of the Chicago Tribune insists that the public too must have some clear visual impression of a person before "we can get a little crazy in caricaturing him with a kind of shorthand." The Universal Press Syndicate's Pat Oliphant says, "I hate changes of Administrations. It takes six months to 'get' a new man."

American political cartooning, in the doldrums for years while the British were better at it, is at a high level now. You get the impression that the top cartoonists would expel from their midst anyone who had to label a figure "Mondale." Mike Peters of the Dayton Daily News speaks of Mondale's "wonderful beak." Most cartoonists either exaggerate the dark circles under Mondale's eyes so that he looks like a panda or give him hooded lids that look like split coffee beans. The Washington Post's Herblock suspects that some cartoonists make Mondale "lumpier" than he is, to suggest stolidity. As MacNelly sees him, "He's very formal, hair in place. Nothing flamboyant. I'm struck by two things, his dullness and a kind of whining." After San Francisco, Mac-Nelly drew a signboard reading GATEWAY TO THE MINNESOTA WHINE COUNTRY.

The best cartoonists seek not just a likeness but some dominant trait that sums up the man. The result can be at war with the cartoonists' political sympathies. "I have a conflict," says Don Wright of the Miami News. "Basically, I'm rooting for Mondale, but sometimes he comes across bland and wimpish." Oliphant draws him with "sleepy eyes bringing out the boring aspects." The Los Angeles Times's Paul Conrad says, "I'd like to see him do better and don't take any relish in making him look incompetent. I'm despondent these days." Peters finds Mondale an "extremely nice guy, but he's dull. I'm probably going to vote for him, but for a cartoonist Nixon or Reagan makes life a lot easier."

The basic Reagan cartoon is the pompadour and neck wrinkles but also a long upper lip that Conrad calls Irish, almost horsy. Peters at an earlier stage emphasized the wrinkles but "got tired of drawing 400 lines" and discovered "you can put a pompadour on anything and it becomes Reagan." Herblock established the memorable Nixon look--furtive, hunched over, 5 o'clock shadow--but goes easier on his present adversary: Reagan is a "pretty good-looking guy." As cartoonists, they all seem grateful for the mobility in Reagan's face. Mike Peters currently sees Reagan as a "Cheshire cat--he's there, but he's not there." As Oliphant draws him, "his eyes are getting closer together. He's looking dopier." Conrad, having caricatured him for 20 years in California, finds Reagan "more than ever--I don't want to say imbecilic--but he's not the brightest man who ever lived." MacNelly says, "I'm more in tune with Reagan than lots of the guys. It's kind of a disadvantage. I don't really go after him as much as I should."

What emerges from talking by telephone to these men, at their drawing boards in Miami, Dayton, Los Angeles and elsewhere, is what lively loners they are. No longer do top cartoonists labor at drawing gun-at-the-head cartoons to satisfy some publisher's sobersided crotchets. Appearing in many papers gives them freedom. Absorbed by politics, they have their own biases and constantly interview their own reactions, but they don't often let a rigid partisanship keep them from a clever idea that will express a public mood. Undoctrinaire iconoclasm is their style. They think more in metaphors than in arguments and don't want to dull a witty simplicity with a weighty qualification. Peters says, "We've been drawing all our lives. We were thrown out of school for drawing the principal. Now we're drawing Presidents."