Doonesbury Characters - Real People

Real People

Numerous real-world figures, especially from politics, have appeared in the strip.

Since the late 1980s some prominent politicians were given direct, but metaphorical, visual portrayals via Doonesbury Icons, avatars in the strip which abstractly represented them.

• Ronald Reagan - A character named Ron Headrest appeared as a computer-generated alter ego of President Reagan. Headrest was a composite of Max Headroom and Ronald Reagan. A similar caricature of Reagan appeared briefly in the film Back to the Future Part II.
• Dan Quayle - Famously appeared as a feather, depicting what Trudeau saw as The Vice-President's lightweight status.
• George H. W. Bush Trudeau drew the first Bush President as one of his "thousand points of light" from his speech at the 1988 Republican National Convention.
• Bill Clinton was depicted as a waffle, emphasizing the popular image that Clinton avoided taking firm stands on political issues.; the symbol was voted for by readers over the alternative choice of a flipping coin.
• Newt Gingrich - Trudeau drew Gingrich as a lit bomb, that eventually exploded.
• George W. Bush was initially depicted as a "point of light" like his father (and the rest of the Bush family), later topped with a baseball cap and then a cowboy hat. Following his inauguration as President, he was depicted as an asterisk to indicate his dubious status as a Supreme Court-appointed head of state, still wearing a cowboy hat ("all hat, no cattle", a phrase used in Texas), then after the beginning of the Iraq War as an asterisk wearing an imperial Roman military helmet. As the second Bush presidency encountered repeated difficulties, the helmet became continually more battered, so that, by his final appearance in office on January 18, 2009, the helmet had lost all of its decoration and was missing several large pieces.
• David Duke was depicted as a swastika, due to his extreme stands on racial issues, and his former status as a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger was drawn as a groping hand, and often addressed by other characters as “Herr Gröpenfuhrer,” a reference to accusations of sexual assault.
• Dick Cheney, late in his vice-presidency, was occasionally represented as a dark cloaked figure, reminiscent of the Grim Reaper or the Emperor from Star Wars, bearing a Roman Imperial staff.
• Ben Quayle (son of Dan Quayle) was depicted 9/19/10 as a smaller feather when he and his father are interviewed by Mark.

Most other prominent figures, after the strip's early years, stopped appearing directly in-frame, and were represented solely by their dialogue emerging from outside the frame, or from a television or a building shown from the outside (especially the White House). The small number of exceptions to this rule are below.

The following figures have been directly portrayed in-frame in the strip.

• Hubert Humphrey (5/7/71) - Mark Slackmeyer met with the Senator and former Vice President as part of his lobbying against the Vietnam War.
• John Kerry (10/21/71-10/23/71) spoke at Walden College for Vietnam Vets Against the War.
• Henry Kissinger (8/14/72) many appearances, but only appeared in-frame for the first few; subsequently is not shown directly.
• Jann Wenner Owner of Rolling Stone magazine, appeared frequently during Uncle Duke's time as a writer for the magazine.
• Jeb Magruder (9/26/73) - figure in the Watergate scandal.
• Dan Rather (1/20/74)
• Neil Young (7/13/74)
• Mao Zedong (3/3/76-3/6/76)
• Donald Trump
• Clint Eastwood (3/3/86) - Shown at the edge of the frame, by a boot and leg in denim. First of six strips mostly concerned with Eastwood's campaign for Mayor of Carmel, CA.
• Frank Sinatra, not only in cartoon form but in actual photos reprinted in the strip showing him consorting with various mobsters.
• Evan Mecham (9/7/87–9/12/87)
• Elvis Presley (8/29/88) - Turns out not to be dead. He is found as a stowaway on the Trump Princess, and claims to have been held aboard a U.F.O. in the intervening years.
• Michael Dukakis (11/1/88)
• Sarah Palin (7/23/10) - Roland Hedley informs the former governor of Alaska that he is stalking her stalker.
• David Petraeus (9/12/10) - Partial silhouette.
• Warren Buffett (9/23/10)
• Hamid Karzai (10/20/10)
• Roger Ailes (09/08/11)
• Mitt Romney (10/08/12–10/13/12) - The young Mitt Romney was depicted as a Mormon missionary in France in 1968.