Gracious sakes, Theodore, if you ain’t goin’ in please get off the springboard
President Roosevelt sits on the springboard dipping his feet in the water as Secretary of War William H. Taft, Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State Elihu Root, Iowa Governor Albert Baird Cummins, and Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette stand behind him on the board waiting. Former Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw stands on land in the background.
Comments and Context
This 1908 cartoon from early in the career of Jay H. “Ding” Darling displays his mastery of caricature and composition, as well as conception, for Ding squeezed a slightly new aspect from a familiar subject in the day’s news: whether President Roosevelt would run again, violating his own public declination in 1904, and whom he would support as his successor, was getting to be a tired topic.