A Tale of Toon Leaders: “Lil’ Bush” vs “Our Cartoon President”

By the time this post goes up, the people of the United States will have completed a…transition of power to the next President elected by said people: Joe Biden. But we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the animated adventures that have occurred during the previous administration. The constant state of flux and chaos forced me to be more aware of things I never thought I would have to learn outside of a Civics class. Impeachment hearings, pandemic responses, the 25th amendment…Wisconsin, etc. I think I speak for all Americans when I say I hope I am never aware of Wisconsin again. And I would say former President Trump acted “cartoonish” but if there’s anything I’ve learned in the time he was in office, it’s that calling someone cartoony has now lost all meaning.

But as we are an animation blog, it seemed fitting to look back on how the US’ leaders have been portrayed in animation. President Biden is no stranger to parody, having been joked about at length during his tenure as VP, and this will likely only increase now that he is even more accountable to his nation. However, there are two Presidents whose public antics inspired full blown series dedicated to capturing the perception they had accrued: Comedy Central’s “Lil’ Bush” and Showtime’s “Our Cartoon President”, which focus on then current presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Two shows with similar purposes, but made in different eras and with very different portrayals of their subjects. So, let’s break that down these two time capsules of political satire as we greet a new administration.

Premise:

Lil’ Bush, as the title implies, is a Muppet Babies kind of take on the President, pulling mainly from the fact that his father, Bush Sr., had notable parallels in his tenure. As such, while Bush W and his cabinet, Lil’ Cheney, Condy (Condoleezza Rice), and Rummy (Donald Rumsfeld), were grade school kids a la South Park who got into wacky adventures with exaggerated caricatures of the real life counterparts, the one who was president in the show was Bush 41, who acted as the rich and out of touch father figure who was busy actually running the nation.

Our Cartoon President, meanwhile, takes more from animated sitcoms, with Trump as President in then-real time as he…well, did what he was doing in real life: desperately seeking attention and power while sitting on his own balls at every turn and dealing with only slightly more exaggerated versions of his family and staff. And, in what was likely what landed the pitch for the series, Trump acting like the egotistical, mentally unstable, money grifting mental gymnast that he always made clear he would be. That might have been why, looking at it post-mortem, that I had an increasing problem with it. It hit too close to home and basically showed us that we were all living in a cartoon.

Timing:

Lil’ Bush first aired in 2007 but first began life as a series of online shorts in 2004 before making the jump to TV. By the time the TV show started its short run, Bush 43 was already more than half done with his second term, while his image as a southern dope daddy’s boy was pretty much crystalized as the nation was already waist deep in the War on Terror and months away from the onslaught of Michael Bay Transformers movies. And with the process of completing animation even slower then than it is today, this meant many of the jokes that could be made about Bush had already been made in some form, so the show ended up pulling from that. Iraq, Katrina, Osama bin Laden, Jeb; all the hits are here. It scratched the Bush bashing itch Comedy Central viewers had, but its late timing meant it was doomed to be short lived after its second season ended in mid-2008, Bush’s last year in office.

In contrast, Our Cartoon President spun off from segments on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, when Trump jokes were as much about being topical as they were collective therapy and venting. In fact, the show ends up feeling like a therapy session for the writers dealing with the news at that time by turning it into entertainment. The series itself premiered in early 2018, barely a year into his term, so the series would have room to breathe for at least three seasons. Part of this also served the unique nature of the Trump presidency, in that every hour was enough political shenanigans that would previously have lasted weeks if not months, so airing during this time gave the writers a very large pool of topical plots to pull from. And the fact that this was Trump’s first term of a possible two meant that an ongoing plot about the upcoming election could naturally form in the latter seasons to organically reach a climax to go out on or potentially continue. The downside of THIS approach, at least for me, ended up being that the humor was bound by waiting on the next major headline and the plots had to be loose and general enough to be malleable for whatever the next big political moment might be. Still, even if the show hasn’t been officially cancelled, I doubt they’ll keep it going to focus on Biden. Though I wish they had done an Inauguration Day as a proper finale instead of what we got.

Obama:

While neither Bush nor Trump appear in any form in the other’s show for whatever reason, there is quite a bit of overlap of other figures from both sides of the isle. Nancy Pelosi, Mitt Romney, both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and even Wolf Blitzer make notable appearances, but one major inclusion stands out: Barack Obama, both pre and post his own two term administration. In Lil’ Bush, Obama is portrayed as a selfless and hopeful do-gooder who appears sporadically throughout the series. Obama’s 2008 campaign was launched in early 2007, months before the show premiered, but there was already plenty of political buzz around him that his use in the show made sense, but he was often overshadowed by the more well known figures in the “Lil’ Dems” group, particularly Lil’ Bill and Hillary and Lil’ Al Gore.

Fast forward a decade later to a thoroughly aged former president Obama, who comes into the series properly in Season 2 in order to help guide the dim-witted but well meaning Joe Biden to uniting the party. His trademark charisma and level headed-ness show him to be the brains behind Cartoon Biden’s campaign, even if he is noticeably burnt out by politics and butts heads with Cartoon Bernie Sanders. It becomes easy to see why he didn’t get his own political satire show about him, as his two terms were virtually devoid of scandal. Basically, in both cartoons, Obama is pretty much the adult in the room whenever he’s around.

Conclusion:
At the end of the day, no leader should be seen as infallible or above criticism or mockery, and as these two cartoons show, no politician is safe from that. Moreover, one might argue that these sorts of responses are necessary to keep leaders humbled, however little it may actually do that. And yet, I am not looking forward to the possibility of having a future president that is so absurd and wacky that they would warrant having another show like these for them. That is not to say I don’t want presidents to be mocked or criticized, far from it in fact. These pieces came about because of a clear national concern for the state of the country that enough people felt it was necessary to encapsulate in this form of parody. Nor do I wish for a series to take the opposite approach and be a glorified puff piece or propaganda for any future leader. Simply put, it is my sincerest hope that it is never necessary for this sort of show to be made again. it is generally easy to agree that the Presidents these shows focus on are among the worst leaders in our nation’s history and I don’t want anyone topping Trump in that in my lifetime. So, here’s to hoping the Biden Administration is as boring as possible. Knock on wood.