Political wisdom in 'Peanuts'

In a four-panel cartoon soliloquy, Lucy the "Peanuts" character laments that another woman will likely be elected president before her.

"Boy, that makes me mad!!" she fumes.

It's one of "Peanuts" author Charles M. Schulz's rare dips into political ink, but remarkably prophetic.

Four months after the strip appeared on March 29, 1984, Walter Mondale named Geraldine Ferraro as his pick for vice president, the first U.S. woman named as a running mate on a major-party ticket. They lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

In the midst of another presidential campaign, the Charles M. Schulz Museum has mounted a compact exhibit, "Political Peanuts," capturing Schulz's sparse takes on the topic.

"We thought a little lightness was needed," said Jane O'Cain, museum curator.

Generally averse to politics, Schulz nonetheless weighed in with the same artistic simplicity and psychological depth that propelled "Peanuts" to global fame for 50 years, appearing in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries, reaching an estimated 335 million people a day.

Central to the exhibit are the three series of strips Schulz penned in 1960, 1964 and 1968 -- three of the 12 presidential campaign years during his half-century of cartooning.

A longtime Santa Rosa resident, Schulz died of complications of colon cancer on Feb. 12, 2000, the day before his last original strip was published.

In the 1964 series, Lucy talks Linus into running for school president, and a reporter for the school paper asks what he will do if elected.

"I intend to straighten things out," Linus declares. "We are in the midst of a moral decline. We are . . ."

The reporter says: "I'll just put down that you're very honored and will do your best if elected."

Linus, in the final panel, utters a thought that has no doubt occurred to most real-life political candidates: "The press is against me!"

O'Cain admires the 1960 series in which Lucy talks Charlie Brown into running for president and envisions the two of them watching the election returns on TV, "and me with my plans by my side."

"Plans? What plans?" the endearingly clueless round-headed kid asks.

Lucy: "For redecorating the White House."

"Brilliant," O'Cain said. John Kennedy won the 1960 election, the exhibit notes, and Jackie Kennedy immediately went about redecorating the White House.

Not openly political himself, Schulz said he was "raised a Republican" but for many years registered in California as in independent, the exhibit says.

In a 1997 interview, he said it was "difficult to label somebody liberal or conservative." The closest he came to self-identifying was: "I think I'm very liberal in my outlook on life and how I treat people."

"Political Peanuts" is on display through Dec. 1.

The exhibit includes its own presidential election, allowing visitors to cast bright yellow ballots into clear plastic boxes for Charlie Brown, Lucy or Snoopy.

So far, the outcome is clear, O'Cain said.

"I'm afraid it looks like Snoopy in a landslide."

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.