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Stephen Hess – RIP

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D. D. Degg Published: January 22, 2026 Updated: January 22, 2026 1 minute 2 comments

Famed American political scientist and political cartoon historian Stephen Hess has passed away.

From the obituary:

Stephen H. Hess, a distinguished political scientist and prolific author whose insightful analyses shaped understanding of the American presidency, media, and bureaucracy for decades, passed away on January 18, 2026, at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 92. A senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution, Hess was renowned for his non-partisan scholarship and his ability to illuminate the complex workings of American government with clarity and precision.

Stephen Hess leaves behind a profound legacy as a scholar who bridged the worlds of academia and public policy. His work continues to be a cornerstone for students and practitioners of American politics, offering timeless perspectives on the institutions that govern the nation. He will be remembered not only for his intellectual contributions but also for his dedication to fostering informed public discourse and his unwavering belief in the power of rigorous inquiry.

For the Thomas B. Fordham Chester E. Finn, Jr. remembers Stephen Hess:

I lost a great friend, and America lost one of its finest writer/historians, when Steve Hess passed away on Sunday morning at the age of 92.

Perhaps you don’t recognize the name. Perhaps that’s because he did not seek the limelight—and perhaps because the latest of his 25 books emerged seven years ago, a memoir that he titled Bit Player: My Life with Presidents and Ideas. But Steve was so much more than a “bit player.”He was, along with much else, one of our foremost biographers of presidents, critical observers of the election process, and students of the Washington media, as well as the White House and presidency. You’ll find a partial biography and bibliography on the Brookings website and an inadequate one on Wikipedia. Dig a bit deeperand you’ll find such seminal works as America’s Political Dynasties, The Washington Reporters, and Organizing the Presidency. The list goes on.

From The New York Times obituary (or here):

Stephen H. Hess, a Washington insider who advised presidents, wrote books on government and the media, and for five decades was an oft-quoted academic news source at what is sometimes called “the other government,” the Brookings Institution, died on Sunday at his home in Washington. He was 92.

Mr. Hess was a go-to source for hundreds of reporters on countless subjects, from analyses of election races to nuances in the clandestine arts of leaking. He enumerated differences between the goals and advantages of presidents in their first year in office as opposed to their second year, when the ideas and talent fade, and explained why second terms are almost always worse, if not disastrous.

None of the above mentions the reason he is showing up at The Daily Cartoonist.

We will turn to Stephen Hess himself and the History News Network for his interest in The Ungentlemanly Art:

I fell in love by accident.  It was 1959 and I was writing a book with my mentor from Johns Hopkins, Malcolm Moos.  It would be called Hats in the Ring: The Making of Presidential Candidates.  The problem was that it was too thin for the price Random House wished to charge.  It needed padding.  So off I went to the Library of Congress to find filler.  There I met curator Milton Kaplan, who opened my eyes to the vast resources of the prints and photographs collections.  Ben Franklin was the first American cartoonist!  Paul Revere drew cartoons when colonists couldn’t afford to buy his silverware!  Currier & Ives cartooned contentedly for competing sides in any dispute, including slavery!  There were the cartoonists in combat with the bosses.  Thomas Nast vs. William Tweed.  Homer Davenport vs. Mark Hanna.  Plus the presidents who must have been created especially for cartoonist’s pen:  Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

Kaplan convinced me that the world needed a history of American political cartoons.  After about twenty rejections, Macmillan decided to take a chance.  The Ungentlemanly Art was published in 1968, complete with illustrated endnotes.

Cartoons became for me an endless gift when Sandy Northrop, a prize-winning filmmaker, won a NEH award to create a series on American political cartoons for PBS and invited me to co-author a companion book.  Although the TV series was not produced, our book was published as Drawn & Quartered (1996).  And now there is a new edition from Transaction, American Political Cartoons: The Evolution of a National Identity, 1754-2010.

Part of the joy of these projects has been the opportunities to observe and otherwise fraternize with the artists whose livelihood is making public figures look ridiculous.  In 1965 I set out across country, first to California, where Paul Conrad had the year before left the Denver Post for the Los Angeles Times…

From Los Angeles, I went on to Denver, where Conrad had been succeeded by a young man from Adelaide, Australia, Pat Oliphant, who after a year in the U.S. had won the Pulitzer Prize. Oliphant came over to my hotel to explain this rare feat…

In 1966 Lyndon Johnson pulled up his shirt to show reporters his scar from a recent gallbladder operation. David Levine turned the scar into the shape of Vietnam, thus exposing the president’s and the nation’s deeper wound…

The other cartoon was Bill Mauldin’s response to the killing of President Kennedy. Here the seated Lincoln at the Washington mall bows his head, covers his face, depicting the nation’s grief…

Stephen Hess photo from The Brookings Institute biography