Cartoon Characters Who Ran for President, Part Eight

Now that the election is over, the fighting can stop, right?   Not a chance.  We here at the JoeFood Blog still have hopes that once the recounts are complete, one of our candidates may edge out the other two.  Here's my last entry in this series; the I Go Pogo campaign,

Part Eight:  I Go Pogo!

In the 1950's Pogo was fast becoming one of the most popular and controversial comic strips in the history of the medium.   For the uninitiated, Pogo is a quiet, unassuming possum, a denizen of the Okefenokee Swamp.  The swamp is inhabited by numerous other critters to numerous to list here, but just this piece of art below may give you an idea.  Walt Kelly, an ex-Disney animator, was the creator.

The comic strip did not start out as controversial, but as it went on the satire got heavier and and more pointed.    On May 1, 1953, Pogo hit the ceiling with the introduction of Simple J. Malarkey, a polecat with a marked resemblance to Senator Joseph McCarthy.  McCarthy was in the midst of his anti-communism crusade at the time that caused many people in the public eye to be blacklisted (see "McCarthyism").   This sequence of strips were censured by many newspapers but began Kelley's practice of bringing political figures into the swamp in animal form.   Eventually you would see Spiro Agnew (a hyena), Richard Nixon (a spider), Khrushchev (a pig), Fidel Castro (a goat), J. Edgar Hoover ( a bulldog), and Lyndon Johnson (a longhorn steer), appear in the swamp.

All of this made Pogo a favorite comic strip on the college campuses.  In 1952 the first "Pogo for President" campaign began in the strip.  Pogo himself was a very reluctant candidate, not even realizing that the swamp had designated him their candidate until weeks after the announcement.  The campaign slogan was I GO POGO, a parody of the I LIKE IKE slogan for the Eisenhower campaign.  The campaign took off, and across the country several colleges held I GO POGO rallies.   One rally at Harvard got completely out of hand; at the end of it all some 1000 students had rioted and 28 students were arrested.  Walt Kelly was a featured speaker at several colleges and helped spread the word about Pogo's campaign.

  

The swamp critters themselves ran Pogo's campaign while Pogo tried in vain to ignore their work.   One of the better slogans they devised was "Pogo's for President and I'm for vice!"

Polling was also a big part of the campaign:

Pogo was run again in 1956, this time with the backing of a great campaign song sung by Kelly himself and relesed on the album Songs of the Pogo.  One of the greatest political songs of all time - once you hear it you'll never forget the words.  You can give it a play below.  Fortunately for the reluctant candidate he did not win either election despite getting hundreds of write-in votes.