John Shelby
Period 2
9/4/01
Political Cartoon



1. Source : 
    www.politicalcartoons.com

2. Published : 
    Sept 3, 2001

3. Symbols :
    In this cartoon, a worried looking George Bush bails money bags out of a worn, patched-up hot air balloon marked ECONOMY. While doing this, he says “Drop a bag, go up.”

4. Interpretation :
    The economy has been doing badly in the past couple months, and Bush has been trying to save it using “band aid” acts (band-aids are used to patch the balloon in the cartoon) which do things like lower inflation and rebate taxes. Though Bush is throwing money out frantically, the situation is portrayed as being fairly grim - the ECONOMY balloon shakes and nears the ground. It seems that, like many people, the artist of this cartoon considers Bush’s attempts to be too little too late, or perhaps simply misguided.

5. Opinion : 
    I have no better ideas than Bush on what to do about the economy, so I can’t say that I would do any better if put in his shoes, but it does seem like Bush is scrambling pretty hard to find a solution to the problem. Things aren’t improving long term, it is likely that Bush is looking for an easy answer.