1963.01.09 “Wonder What She is Smiling At?”
by Charles (Chuck) George Werner (1909-1997)
11 x 13 in., ink in board
Coppola Collection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Werner

Charles (Chuck) Werner won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1939 for a cartoon he did for the Daily Oklahoman titled “Nomination for 1938” which allowed for the transfer of the Sudetenland to Hitler’s Germany (October 6, 1938). At age 29, Werner was the youngest person to win the Pulitzer. Werner left the Daily Oklahoman to be the Chief Editorial Cartoonist at the Chicago Sun in 1941 before leaving for the Indianapolis Star in 1947. Throughout his nearly sixty-year career, many U.S. Presidents expressed interest in Werner’s cartoons, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Harry Truman requesting cartoons for their presidential libraries.

JFK is standing with John Q Public.

In January 1963, Kennedy presented Congress with a tax proposal that would reduce the top marginal tax rate from 91 percent to 65 percent, and lower the corporate tax rate from 52 percent to 47 percent; in total, the cut was projected to decrease income taxes by about $10 billion and corporate taxes by about $3.5 billion.

He also endorsed deficit spending (mild by today’s standards). So tax cuts were accompanied by increasing the minimum wage, improving Social Security benefits, and passing an urban renewal package.

Even the Mona Lisa could only sit and smile at the contradiction.