Articles
In a career of almost sixty years, political cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman drew thousands of cartoons portraying politicians, campaigns, and elections. His witty drawings, which appeared daily in Washington D.C. newspapers from 1891 until his death in 1949, depicted every aspect of the electoral process with humor and insight. The National Archives and Records Administration with the support of the Foundation for the National Archives recently organized an exhibition of its extensive collection of Berryman's original pen and ink drawings relating to American politics. Humanities Texas will begin circulating a facsimile version of "Running for Office: Candidates, Campaigns, and the Cartoons of Clifford Berryman" as a new addition to our inventory of fifty traveling exhibitions. "Running for Office" will be available to venues beginning in January 2009. More information about this exhibition is available here.
President Harry S. Truman, the Democratic presidential nominee in the election of 1948, was widely forecast to lose by a large margin to Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey. This cartoon shows the prevailing public opinion of the time, just days before the election took place. Despite several polls predicting a landslide victory for Dewey, Truman won the election in one of the biggest political upsets in U.S. history.