Will Rogers and the Birth of Modern Political Humor

We are living in a golden age of humorous political commentary. This is not surprising, given the abundant comic material oozing from every pore of the American body politic these days. From Donald Trump’s bizarre declarations about illegal immigrants (“They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!”) to Kamala Harris’ indigestible word salads (“It’s time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day”), from Marjorie Taylor Greene’s befuddled culinary claims (“Pelosi’s Gaspacho Police [are] spying on members of Congress”) to Tim Walz’s addled declarations (“I’ve become friends with school shooters”), the comedy quotient in American public life has never been higher.

Humorists have seized the opportunity to attract enormous audiences and build influential careers by mocking and satirizing our contemporary political foibles. Jon Stewart has pilloried conservative shibboleths for the last twenty years from a position on the political left. From the right, comic provocateur Greg Gutfeld gleefully skewers progressive pieties with outrageous, often absurdist quips. As a long-time liberal grown suspicious of sanctimonious wokism, Bill Maher pivots to train his comedy guns on bromides and absurdities exuding from both the left and right. This trio follow in the footsteps of earlier political comics. Mark Russell, for instance, satirized both political parties from the 1970s through the 1990s, often on PBS comedy specials while in the rebellious 1960s figures such as Dick Gregory used humor to illuminate the civil rights struggle and expose the conundrums of the Vietnam War. A decade earlier, Mort Sahl, wearing a sweater and brandishing a rolled-up newspaper in one hand, mocked the postwar spirit of political conformity dominating the Age of Eisenhower.

Preceding all of them, however, was Will Rogers, a groundbreaking humorist working from the 1910s to the mid-1930s who stands as the father of modern American political humor. He amassed an enormous, devoted audience with his witty observations on American life. Politics, then as now a fertile subject for comic commentary, stood atop his list of topics. He built a foundation for modern political humor with three key initiatives. Rogers was the first humorist to make public affairs and political disputes the mainstay of his joking. He was also the first reach a national audience through revolutionary new communications venues such as syndicated newspapers, mass-appeal magazines, radio airwaves, traveling stage shows, and eventually the magic of the silver screen. Finally, Rogers innovated by using his own voice instead of speaking through a fictional character, unlike nineteenth-century comic creations such as Charles Farrar Browne’s “Artemus Ward,” Finley Peter Dunne’s “Mr. Dooley,” and Samuel Clemens’ “Mark Twain.” Will Rogers never uttered a political jibe except as Will Rogers. The Stewarts, Gutfelds, and Mahers of our time, cracking wise as themselves on television and social media, can trace their comic lineage directly to this horse-sense humorist from the early 1900s.

Will Rogers emerged from an unusual background. A Cherokee Indian from the Oklahoma territory who rose to fame as a lariat artist and cowboy humorist in vaudeville, the Ziegfeld Follies, and silent movies, he earned public acclaim with his shrewd, folksy, and humorous observations on American life and values. By the 1920s, he was offering a syndicated column in over 300 newspapers, a stream of magazine articles and essays, steady appearances on the national lecture circuit and at after-dinner speeches, and eventually a national radio program and starring roles in several Hollywood “talkie” films.

Rogers reached a vast audience and became the most beloved figure in America from the late 1910s to his death in 1935. Especially fascinated by the nation’s politics, he often trained his humor on its foibles and achievements alike and became the most influential commentator on public affairs in the United States. As H. L. Mencken once burst out in mock outrage at an after-hours drinking party with a group of journalists during the 1928 Republican convention, “Look at the man. He alters foreign policies. He makes and unmakes candidate. He destroys public figures. Millions of Americans read his words or listen to him over the radio… I consider him the most dangerous writer alive today.” When Rogers chuckled and protested that no one with any sense took his jokes seriously, the Baltimorean agreed that only half-wits did so but claimed that included “85% of the voting population.”

While overstated with his trademark combination of witty exaggeration and flamboyant insult, Mencken captured a central truth: Rogers’ humorous observations on American public issues had made him a significant political force in the country. And his style was key to his appeal. He appeared as the homespun, cracker-barrel philosopher, the country-boy-come-to-the-city who appeared mighty perplexed before zeroing in on his target with a series of shrewd observations. In personal appearances on stage or in lectures, the Oklahoman would push his cowboy hat forward, chomp on gum, scratch the back of his head while shaking it, look at the floor in bewilderment, and then skewer the political target at hand. In his newspaper column he presented the linguistic equivalent. Beginning with the disarming claim, “All I know is what I read in the papers,” he filled his essays with misspellings, mangled grammar, promiscuous capitalizations, tortured syntax, and eccentric punctuation to underline his hayseed persona and provide cover for the revealing insights that quickly emerged.  

Rogers’ folksy approach produced hilarious sendups of the political system. He gleefully skewered the “bunk” of American politics, his favorite word for politicians’ shameless hypocrisy, bombastic rhetoric, inflated egos, and shady deal-making. Both Democrats and Republicans stood guilty of peddling bunk. “You know, the more you read and observe about this politics thing, you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other,” Rogers quipped. “It is getting so that a Republican promise is not much more to be depended on than a Democratic one. And that has always been considered the lowest form of collateral in the world.”

Rogers stood ankle-deep in a flood of political bunk. The 1924 election saw him suffering through a Democrat convention which took three weeks and 103 ballots only to nominate a non-entity for president, the former ambassador to England, John W. Davis. The humorist noted tongue-in-cheek of the marathon, “In number of population the convention is holding its own. The deaths from old age among the delegates is about offset by the birth rate.” After returning home still reeling from a barrage of overblown, benumbing speeches, Rogers wrote that he expected one of his children to request movie money by rising at the dinner table and intoning, “The great Democratic Party of which I and my forefathers for generations back have been honored members, the Party of the Common People!” He promised to “smite him, even if he be of my own flesh and blood.” When Davis went on to be slaughtered by President Calvin Coolidge in the general election, an exasperated Rogers bemoaned the uselessness of the exercise, comparing it to himself being put in the ring with the heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Dempsey. While everyone knew the outcome beforehand, politicians were like the boxing promoter who said, “Yes, but come and pay your money and see how far out of the ring he will knock him.”

Congress provided a favorite target for humor. Rogers appeared in a silent-film trilogy of satires in the mid-1920s—Going to Congress, Our Congressman, A Truthful Liar—playing “Alfalfa Doolittle,” a hapless character who bumbled into the national legislature and found abundant reward for his ineptness.  When the real Congress reconvened after a round of egregious bickering and inaction, the Oklahoman joked, “Let us all pray: Oh Lord, give us strength to bear that which is about to be inflicted upon us. Be merciful with them, Oh Lord, for they know not what they do.” Rogers frequently claimed that the last two letters in Washington D.C. stood for “Department of Comedy” and described his simple approach to humorous commentary: “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

In foreign affairs, the Oklahoman made much comedic hay out of the Washington Conference of 1921-22, which promoted disarmament as the pathway to international peace. He dismissed such naïve efforts, writing, “In fact, every war has been preceded by a peace conference. That’s what always starts the next war.” He sarcastically praised the United States’ promise to scuttle one of its greatest battleships as an innovation: “You see, up to then, battleships had always been sunk by the enemy.”  Of other nations agreeing to destroy naval armaments while utilizing loopholes, he joked, “England is to sink three battleships that competed against the Spanish Armada” while “Japan is raising two that the Russians sunk [in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War] and will re-sink them for the treaty.”  Such efforts were bound for failure, the humorist argued, because most nations “think just as much of each other as two rival gangs of bootleggers.”

While Rogers’ down-home, just-folks style created its surface appeal, his political humor rested on three bedrock principles. First and foremost, the Oklahoman suffused his joke-making with a deeply felt spirit of populism. He venerated the common man and made the standards, judgements, and status of ordinary people a lodestar for his critiques of politicians and public issues. The grammar-challenged, drawling humorist joked of his instinctive connection to workaday Americans, “You can’t make any commoner appeal than I can.” Steering clear of the emerging clash between social reform progressivism and fiscally responsible conservatism, Rogers instead drew upon the 19^th-century populist tradition and advocated for capitalism, individualism, and competition while insisting that it should work fairly. He believed that entrenched wealth should not foreclose ordinary citizens from securing a good job and having opportunity to become successful. He insisted that the traditional values of common folk—marriage and family, hard work and ambition, community attachment and old-fashioned patriotism—would aid their endeavors.

Much of Rogers’ political humor flowed in this populist channel. He parodied the malign “money power” of bankers and stockbrokers, as when he learned of a Wall Street plan to add 275 additional seats to the stock exchange and recommended this newspaper ad: “No training, no conscience necessary; all you need is six hundred thousand dollars, but you get it back the first good day.” When he addressed a convention of bankers in 1922, a grinning Rogers began, “Loan sharks and interest hounds: I have addressed every form of organized graft in the United States except Congress, so it’s naturally a pleasure for me to appear before the biggest.” In the same vein, he recommended that conservative speechmakers adopt a more honest template: our candidate “is the son of a rich man. He has never done a tap of work in his life that anyone knows of. He just wants the job for it looks like the easiest one in sight.” At the same time, the Oklahoman mocked progressives’ tendency to excuse criminal behavior as the product of poverty. Common sense dictated jail time for lawbreakers, he noted, but that was “out of the question—that would be barbarous and takes us back, as the [social reformer] hysterics say, to the days before Civilization.” The result could be seen in the Windy City where Rogers cracked about a murderous crime wave, “Pork used to be Chicago’s chief commodity; now automatic pistols and floral offerings are its leading industries.” He concluded, a “liberal is a man who wants to use his own ideas on things in preference to [earlier] generations who, he knows, knew more than he does.” For Rogers, political progress lay in avoiding such well-worn ideological ruts and nourishing an American system where hard work, competition, and equal opportunity prevailed and the workaday American had a fair shot for a good life. As the humorist wrote during the Great Depression, “My sympathy is naturally with the little fellow that has struggled along all these years . . . . Give it [wages for work] to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyway. But at least it will have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”

Second, Rogers insisted that political disputation should be kept in perspective. He urged his fellow citizens to avoid politicizing every public issue and instead concentrate on more meaningful endeavors—family, friends, community, and work. Despite the dire warnings of political zealots, the Oklahoman reminded, “There is no less sickness, no less Earthquakes, no less Progress, no less inventions, no less morality, no less Christianity under one [president] than the other.” He reminded that a powerful Congress insured “no president could do any harm even if he wanted to” while the Supreme Court would “see that Congress don’t go on a tear.”  But for Rogers the populist tribune, the sturdiest barrier to political extremism and zealotry lay in the mass of workaday American citizens who sought common-sense solutions to public problems. They rightly sought to work a decent job, raise their families, enjoy their neighbors and communities, and ignore self-styled reformers constantly trying to improve them. In a famous 1925 column, Rogers declared his faith in the common individual standing among:

“the big Honest Majority . . . [who is] not a Politician. He is not a 100 percent American. He is not any organization, either uplift or downfall. He is of no decided Political faith . . . . It looks to me like he is just an Animal that has been going along, believing in right, doing right, tending to his own business, letting the other fellows alone. He don’t seem simple minded enough to believe that EVERYTHING is right and doesn’t appear to be cuckoo enough to believe that EVERYTHING is wrong . . . . In fact, all I can find out about him is that he is just NORMAL.”

In practical political terms, Rogers argued, this meant that most Americans wanted just enough government to protect their individual pursuits of happiness. They grew impatient with political and social disputes, as in the pervasive weariness with competing zealotry over Prohibition. The Oklahoman joked, “Eighty percent of America wish the ‘wets’ would get so drunk they would be speechless for the rest of their lives. And the ‘drys’ get so perfect that the Lord would call ‘em away from this earth up into heaven.” Calvin Coolidge’s popularity, he suggested at another point, stemmed from the fact that he was “the first president to discover that what the American people want is to be let alone.” For the cowboy humorist, a healthy perspective on politics meant that ideological disputes and public policy fights should be granted due importance, but not allowed to overwhelm more important endeavors in life.

Finally, Rogers’ humor underlined his belief in a politics of civility: critical yet charitable, principled yet magnanimous, serious in approach yet genial in expression. He followed his own advice, making jokes that could be sharp but were seldom mean-spirited; pillorying politicians’ shortcomings but never making it personal. “I don’t think I ever hurt any man’ feelings by my little gags. I know I never willfully did it,” he wrote in 1923. “[Politicians] knew it was meant in good nature.” This cowboy connoisseur of civility political disputants were opponents, not enemies, and that contrary viewpoints deserved respect. Despite their faults, Rogers wrote of political figures, “the Rascals, when you meet ‘em face to face and know ‘em, they are mighty nice fellows.” He declared famously,“ I’ve joked about every prominent man in my time but I never met a man I didn’t like.” The cowboy humorist saw public affairs as an arena for genial discussion and debate, not a blood sport. He offered the sage advice that when dealing with a political disputant, “don’t disagree with him looking at him; walk around behind him and see the way he’s looking.”

Rogers’ civility contained a strong element of nonpartisanship. He made equal fun of both parties, frequently claiming, “You know, it takes nerve to be a Democrat. But it takes money to be a Republican.” During presidential elections, the cowboy humorist noted, “a lot of people lose a lot of sleep and get all heated up over it, and Politicians will spout off that if such and such a man is not elected it will mean sure destruction of the whole country. Now just stop and figure… We haven’t been ruined under a single one of their [earlier presidents’] administration.”  The Oklahoman countered with a folksy observation: “You know, the more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that’s out [of office] always looks the best.” Rogers urged his fellow citizens to understand the real difference between the parties: while a Republican valued efficiency and saw public office as a sphere where he could operate “as independent[ly] as a bank Vice-President,” a Democrat envisioned it as “a cross between the country grocery store and the modern night club. They welcome anything in there just so it’s in the shape of an argument.” For most of his career, Rogers took a non-partisan stance but even when he publicly leaned toward the party of Franklin Roosevelt during the traumatic years of the Great Depression, he jested, “I don’t belong to any organized political faith; I’m a Democrat.”

The critic Clive James once observed, “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.  A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” As Will Rogers danced across the political landscape a century ago, his jests and jibes prompted chuckles throughout the United States because they deflated the high-toned pomp and pretense of the American political class and exposed its cant and hypocrisy. But in a deeper sense, his humor resonated because it was deeply, typically American in its embrace of self-reliant individualism and pragmatic problem-solving, its suspicion of government power, and its preference for what we now call “civil society”—the network of family, work, religious, community, charity, and avocational organizations that aided citizens’ pursuit of happiness. His insistence that disagreements be debated with civility, geniality, and forbearance appealed to Americans’ better angels.

Rogers cracked jokes to reveal an American politics that was all too human—fraught with foolishness and idealism, fragility and purpose, squandered opportunities and admirable achievements. While political parties, positions, and policies mattered, choosing between them seldom brought heaven or hell, despite the warnings of partisans. When a candidate withdrew from a presidential race claiming that 90 percent of the country was satisfied with the current political situation, Rogers disagreed. With most citizens busy pursuing their own version of happiness, he claimed, “90 percent of the people in this country don’t give a damn.”  

So while Will Rogers told political jokes, he wasn’t a jokester. His humorous commentary about public affairs and political disputes at the dawn of the modern age helped explain America to itself. That he did so with charm, wit, and generosity reminds us that such a thing is possible as we view it from an age where public discourse specializes in the vicious put-down, the mocking characterization, and the condescending assertion of others’ stupidity. The cowboy humorist’s political quips from a century ago still provide direction in our contentious times. So when you hear contemporary political zealots proclaiming “the end of democracy” or “our country will be ruined,” recall the wisdom peeking out from one of Will Rogers’ jokes. Regardless of most election results, he observed, America “keeps right on going. Time has only proven one thing, and that is you can’t ruin this country even with politics.”

Steven Watts is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Missouri. He has authored eight books and published pieces in National Review, Salon, The Federalist, Chronicle of Higher Education, The American Spectator, The Atlantic, and The American Mind. His most recent book, Citizen Cowboy: Will Rogers and the American People, has just appeared with Cambridge University Press.