Regardless of what you think of his politics, Donald Trump has one guaranteed group of followers – those who make their living poking fun at politicians. While his impact on the arts is negligible (he did use $20,000 from his charity foundation to buy a life-size portrait of himself), his unscripted outbursts, unpredictable antics and terrifying truth-bending have provided a wellspring of material for political cartoonists, satirists and comedians.
The only problem is that some satirists say that the current political reality is almost more entertaining than anything they could invent. Director Armando Iannucci, who created hit series Veep, told CNN that the US presidential campaign and Brexit have made politics far more entertaining than any fiction could be. ‘If we plotted a lot of these lines in fiction we’d be told we had barely credible story lines,’ he said.
Satire thrives on extremes. Whether politicians operate from a place of good or evil is inconsequential. Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator reportedly upset Hitler, while Nelson Mandela was regularly lampooned by South African satirists. Striking physical characteristics are desirable (Julia Gillard’s red hair, John Howard’s eyebrows) but better still is a sartorial faux pas (Think Tony Abbot’s budgie smugglers or Malcolm Fraser losing his trousers).
In recognition of the 2016 US presidential election, here’s our roundup of the best politicians for satirists from top to, er, bottom.
Churchill piggybank, dated from the mid-40s. Allegedly used by the Hitler Youth in their door-to-door solicitations for donations.
Winston Churchill
Any great political personality becomes a target for satire, and Churchill is no exception. While his speeches and broadcasts during WW2 helped inspire British resistance, his status as a statesman, orator and writer meant he was often lampooned by both British and foreign press. Of course Churchill could give as well as he got. He once said of Charles de Gaulle. ‘He looks like a female llama who has been surprised in the bath.’ And de Gaulle was an ally.
Cam Cardow / Ottawa Citizen, Politicalcartoons.com
Arnold Schwarzenegger
While a celebrity-turned-politician isn’t that unusual (see: Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, Jerry Springer) a former bodybuilder turned action movie star turned state governor is just waiting to be satirised. The 2003 California gubernatorial election was political theater at its most theatrical, with a flood of unlikely candidates from every imaginable background. In a field that included diminutive actor Gary Coleman, former baseball commissioner Pete Ueberroth, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, and political pundit Arianna Huffington, action star Arnold Schwarzenegger emerged as the winner. Arnie served two terms as the state “Governator” of California from 2003 until 2011, running as a Republican but with many liberal ideals.
“I’m losing all those who can attest to my moral compass!”
Jacques Chirac
France is proud of its satirical heritage, which dates back to the Middle Ages. French kings were accompanied by buffoons, a comic character permitted to mock the king. After the French Revolution, society replaced buffoons with writers, who have maintained a strong satirical culture since. Long-serving (and long-suffering) president Jacques Chirac was renowned for his energetic womanising, hedonistic lifestyle and typical French attitudes. A young Jacques Chirac is the basis of a dashing bureaucrat character in the 1976 Asterix comic strip album Obelix and Co.
George W Bush
Yet another politician who became a caricature of himself, ‘Dubya’ made one gaffe after another. His inability to put a sentence together without repeating the same word five times and chronic mispronunciation “nucular” provided a feast for comics all over the world. He was parodied widely on shows such as The Late Late Show and Saturday Night Live, and became a fictionalised character in comics, films and cartoons.
Bush’s presidency inspired a string of work featuring incompetent American presidents, including Michael Moore’s mocking film Fahrenheit 9/11, Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday, Brian Haw’s Iraq-protest-turned-Turner-prize-winner-turned-West-End-play The State We’re In, and David Hare’s play Stuff Happens.
An editorial cartoon of Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, 1865, entitled “The Rail Splitter at Work Repairing the Union”. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln is remembered today with deep respect, powered perhaps by his assassination as well as his role in ending slavery. But at the time of his presidency his ambitious federal agenda was widely lampooned. Cartoonists poked fun at his policies of agenda of preserving the union, abolishing slavery, strengthening the federal government, and modernizing the economy. Among his other achievements, we could add the boost he gave to early satirists in the US.
Chris Riddell for The Guardian
Boris Johnson
Never before has London had a mayor who looked less like a statesman than BoJo. With his flop of blonde hair and foppish Oxbridge accent, Johnson is already a walking caricature. Satirists, comedians and cartoonists have had a field day with his polarising politics and elitist Tory ideologies: Nick Clegg described him as ‘like Donald Trump with a thesaurus’.
A still from Spitting Image
Margaret Thatcher
Arts critic Michael Billington noted, ‘Thatcher may not have cared passionately about the arts, but she left her emphatic mark upon them.’ Her election in May 1979 coincided almost exactly with the opening of the London Comedy Store and the birth of alternative comedy. Thatcher’s conservative agenda fuelled the snarky satire of the 80s, with comedians like Stephen Fry, Ben Elton and due French and Saunders getting their start criticising the Iron Lady.
Bernard O’Leary wrote in The Guardian, ‘Maggie was a fully formed comedy character before comedians had even gotten to her. Her bouffant and handbag and nasal voice were comedy gold, but she was also earnest, principled and said exactly what she meant.
‘You knew exactly what Maggie stood for. And that made it easy to mock her.’
Sarah Palin
When the 2008 presidential candidate John McCain designated Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nomination, satirists rubbed their hands with glee. Palin’s social conservatism, religious views and lack of experience led to some memorable moments. But it wasn’t until comedian Tina Fey parodied Palin’s interview with Katie Couric – repeating the original interview verbatim – that Palin-mocking reached the big time.
Bob Hawke
In the tradition of Australian irreverence there have been few politicians to escape the satirical dart. In the sketch comedy series The Gillies Report, Max Gillies performed scathingly accurate portrayals of public figures, including Ronald Reagan, Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and most famously, Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Hawke was a cricket-loving womanising larrikin, who, in his Oxford University days, famously set a new world record after he drank a yard of ale in 11 seconds. His ear-pulling mannerisms and verbal tics were a joy for Gillies who never quite recovered from the toppling of Hawke as Prime Minister.
