Capability
Capability
How do we know who will be a capable leader? Who is ever truly ready to be President? The theme of capability and preparation has been a key touchstone for visual satirists throughout American history. Pat Oliphant deftly skewered candidates who he felt showed themselves incapable of being strong leaders, from portraying Jimmy Carter cowering from the “killer rabbit” he encountered while fishing in Georgia in 1979 to depicting George W. Bush as an incompetent child entirely under the command of his older Vice President Dick Cheney. Likewise, the 1852 Currier cartoon contrasts the “available” (but less gifted) presidential candidates Winfield Scott and Franklin Pierce with their more capable rivals Millard Fillmore, Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, and others. In Napoleon Sarony’s “Little Red Riding Hood” satire, the physically diminutive Martin Van Buren is dwarfed by the wolfish Thomas Benton, a radical Democrat who was seen as a more capable heir of Andrew Jackson’s populist legacy.
Pat Oliphant, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, charcoal sketch, 2009. Courtesy of the Wallace House Center for Journalists.
Pat Oliphant, Jimmy Carter and the “Killer Rabbit,” charcoal sketch, 2009. Courtesy of the Wallace House Center for Journalists.
Guest Book, William L. Clements Library Records, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Napoleon Sarony, “The Wolf Bent-on, meeting Little Red Riding Hood” (New York: H.R. Robinson, c. 1840).
N. Currier, “Capability and Availability” (New York: N. Currier, c. 1852).
