"It's like the gun lobby guys say -- Laws interfere wit' us sportsmen" 1965

Uncontrolled Campaign Spending V 92nd Congress - November 17, 1971

For the championship of the United States

Somethings never change.

Campaign finance spending soared in the 1960s. The cost of the 1968 presidential campaign was $300 million — almost double that of 1964. With Republican coffers in 1971 comfortably filled while the Democrats were some $9 million in debt, the Democratic-controlled Congress considered proposals to provide public financing. But President Richard Nixon threatened a veto. Eventually, they compromised on some public financing of presidential elections starting in 1976. Since then, loopholes in the laws have permitted almost unlimited political spending far in excess of the government's contributions and of all previous campaigns. In the year 2000 campaign, more than $300 million had already been spent on political ads alone before the end of September. This cycle is set up to be the most expensive in history.

How about one more try? - May 29, 1963

In spring 1962, President John F. Kennedy, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union were wrestling with a formula for a nuclear test ban agreement. Kennedy told a press conference that if an accord were not reached soon, "the genie might be out of the bottle."

Mushrooming Cloud - April 1, 1965

Communist China exploded its first atomic bomb in October 1964, and the State Department warned in February 1965 that the Chinese, under Mao Zedong, were preparing another nuclear test. Although the Soviet Union insisted that the Chinese tests did not pose a threat, Herb Block's menacing, blossoming caricature of leader Mao Zedong suggests that China's emergence as an unbridled nuclear power was, and continues to be, a world-wide concern.

Have a care, sir - March 4, 1954

Throughout his political career, Dwight Eisenhower refused to take a public stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy's aggressive anti-communist campaign. Eisenhower even struck from a 1952 campaign speech in Wisconsin a defense of his mentor, George C. Marshall, a McCarthy target. Half a dozen Republican senators, including Ralph Flanders, joined Margaret Chase Smith in a "declaration of conscience" against McCarthy. Eisenhower, however, continued to speak of "justice and fair play" in fighting communism, and it was a long time before they prevailed.

I Am Not A Crook - May 24, 1974

Nixon hanging between the tapes

Chief—The Backswing—Look Out—

10/17/1973

Events in the Watergate crisis moved so rapidly and dramatically on the weekend of October 19–21 that Herblock drew two cartoons to cover them. Tape recordings made in the Oval Office were the object of a jurisdictional struggle involving Congress, Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and the White House. The tapes might determine if President Nixon was complicit in the 1972 break-in of Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex, and whether he had interfered with the FBI’s investigation of this crime. Nixon argued that the tapes were protected by executive privilege and national security; the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his claims but preferred that the parties reach an accommodation.

This cartoon reflects the nation’s somber mood after the “Saturday-night massacre,” with the “backswing” heading toward Nixon himself, as newspaper headlines screamed “pressure for impeachment mounting.”

Watch That Carpet, Fella

3/31/1966

Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

A few days before this cartoon appeared, President Johnson had signed a supplemental appropriations bill that provided $13.1 billion—the amount he had requested—for the Vietnam War. At the same time, LBJ was meeting with his top domestic advisors, asking them to trim expenditures in nonmilitary sectors of the budget so that the deficit could be held to its predicted level.

Albert Einstein Lived Here - April 19, 1955

Herb Block pays tribute to scientist Albert Einstein, possibly the greatest man of the twentieth century.

Fire - June 17, 1949

By 1949, the Soviets had expanded their control to cover most of Eastern Europe, and it appeared that China would soon fall to the communists as well. "The fear-filled forties and fifties were a dark period when the spread of communism abroad increased anxieties and frustration at home," wrote Herb Block. In their zeal to stamp out all signs of subversion in the United States