George Santayana famously wrote that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Examples of this axiom can be found everywhere in our nation’s history. Sometimes, however, it’s necessary to look to our artists to reveal them to us.
Clifford Berryman was a political cartoonist who worked for the Washington Post during the start of the last century. He worked until his death in 1949. He was the man who in 1902 first associated President Theodore Roosevelt with a small bear cub, one he refused to shoot, thus earning him the nickname “Teddy”—the cartoon, “Drawing the Line in Mississippi” inspired New York store owner Morris Michtom to create a new toy and call it the Teddy Bear.
Berryman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his political cartoons, ones that exposed fraud and hypocrisy in the halls of the federal government—on both sides of the aisle. The panel shown below was published on Sept. 24, 1922, yet it could be printed today as a contemporary comment on the state of our elected officials, especially when the approval rating for Congress is at 9 percent, an all time low.
Berryman’s cartoons satirized both Democrats and Republicans and covered topics such as drought, farm relief, and food prices; representation of the District of Columbia in Congress; labor strikes and legislation; campaigning and elections; political patronage; European coronations; the America's Cup; and the atomic bomb.
Berryman was a prominent figure in Washington, D.C., and President Truman once told him, "You are ageless and timeless. Presidents, senators and even Supreme Court justices come and go, but the Monument and Berryman stand." Berryman's cartoons can be found at the Library of Congress, National Archives and George Washington University, as well as archives that house presidential collections.
On the bright side, Santayana also said that wisdom comes by disillusionment. According to him we should be the wisest people on earth. Unfortunately we’re not wise enough to kick those people out of office who have caused us this great disillusionment.
Men like Berryman appear rarely, and although famous during his lifetime, he is all but forgotten today; but his message should be remembered, it should be a call to arms. We may have repeated our mistakes in the past, but we should be looking to the future to wipe that slate clean.
April 29, 2014