Political Cartoons

During 1972, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger pulled off an amazing political coup when they revealed their secret negotiations with China. The first president to ever visit Communist China, Nixon should have been a hero. Instead, his legacy was tainted by the Watergate scandal and all of its revelations.

• The day after John Dean gave damaging testimony about the President to the "Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities," Herb Block drew out Nixon's predicament. "Nixon awash in his office" was published in the Washington Post on 26 June 1973.


• During the summer of 1973, Block observed that the "Watergate Crimes and White House Horrors" weren't the first to be associated with Richard Nixon. (Washington Post, 29 July 1973.)


• The month before Nixon's resignation, Block expressed his belief that the president was an "unindicted co-conspirator." (Washington Post, 14 July 1974.)  Thirteen days later, the United States Supreme Court issued an order, directing the President to turn over all  White House tape recordings dealing with the Watergate affair.  (Those tapes were the subject of a later interview during which David Frost asked Richard Nixon a series of pointed, difficult questions.)
  


• Block had been critical of Nixon's tactics for more than 20 years. During his 1954 Vice Presidential campaign, Nixon accused some of the most respected members of the Senate with being "soft on communism." The image Block drew of Nixon at the time dogged the future president for the rest of his active political career. (Washington Post; October 29, 1954.)

Richard Nixon made obvious mistakes, but he was not the only American president to be skewered by Herb Block's drawing pen. Let's examine a few more targets.