REPORTER:   David Brill

Tonight is a rare opportunity for a crowd to see Pat Oliphant at work, and they're clearly loving it. These are just a few of his millions of fans.

MAN: Pat Oliphant, ladies and gentleman. Tagged that wall. He tagged that mofo.

REPORTER: What do you think of his work, please?

MAN: My God, he's unbelievably good.

MAN 2: And we're all on the same page politically too

WOMAN: It's fabulous. I mean, we're very lucky to have him here in the community.

REPORTER: What do you think of him?

WOMAN 2: Wonderful. He's great.

The picturesque town of Santa Fe in New Mexico. Pat Oliphant carries enormous influence in America's biggest cities but he's chosen this quiet town as his home.

PAT OLIPHANT, CARTOONIST: This is the Bush legacy thing which I've been waiting to do for some well, probably eight years.

Three times a week he sits down to skewer the egos of the high and mighty.

PAT OLIPHANT: What we're doing is recording the wretched legacy that Bush has left behind and I'm trying to get it to pursue him here, monster-like.

Once he's sketched out his idea, Pat heads to his sun-lit studio to create the real thing.

PAT OLIPHANT: This time of year, when the sun seems over the south. Summer in Australia.

Pat refuses to use a computer, still drawing his cartoons the old-fashioned way using a dip pen and ink.

PAT OLIPHANT: The cartoon dictates the way you work. The line has to be in tune with the image. I could be using a brush on this and get it all black, but I want to have daylights through it and I want it to look scraggly and tattered and torn.

He started cartooning back in Australia in the 1950s when Robert Menzies ruled the roost.

PAT OLIPHANT: He had these big eyebrows. Long, top lip. He just wanted that seat in the House of Lords so much. So he suggested the new Australian currency instead of the dollar should be the royal. Kiss my ass.

REPORTER: Pat, why did you leave Australia?

PAT OLIPHANT: It was a very repressive time, a repressed time in Australia. And everything else seemed to be going on elsewhere, in this country especially. Civil rights was going on, Vietnam was going on, the protests, everything was becoming polarised and in Australia you could do cartoons about the weather. Have to erase a few lines here. Hope they don't run.

Pat's adopted home liked him so much that in 1967, just three years after arriving, he won the nation's highest journalistic honour – a Pulitzer Prize. Nowadays his cartoons are syndicated to 400 newspapers across the US, and around the world.

REPORTER: So there's the completed cartoon for today of the end of Bush's... End of eight years in the White House.

PAT OLIPHANT: Yeah, and, of course, I have mixed emotions about it. It's a dichotomous thing because he's given me a great 8-year ride with a match-up of just the perfect villains. And cartoonists, as you know, depend on villains. And so I'm losing probably the best cast that I've ever had and one thing I just have to remember is that politicians will never eventually let you down. They're going to come through with something. Bye Bush.

REPORTER: Some of Patrick's here?

SUSAN OLIPHANT, PATS WIFE: So Patrick. Small one of his. I love that one.

REPORTER: His work is not just cartoons is it? He's known for that of course because that's the commercial side.

SUSAN OLIPHANT: No, it's not. He's a painter. But he's also as equally good a sculptor as he is at drawing and painting.

REPORTER: And what's this one here?

SUSAN OLIPHANT: Oh, this is one that he did...

Pat's wife Susan shows me more of his work. I'm amazed by the diversity of the art that he creates.

PAT OLIPHANT: And it's two people?

SUSAN OLIPHANT: Yes it is.

PAT OLIPHANT: Lovers.


The two met more than 20 years ago. Susan owned a gallery in upmarket Georgetown in Washington, and Pat was looking for somewhere to exhibit his work.

SUSAN OLIPHANT: He had already started then working with sculpture and I was just astonished and astounded. And he never had a museum show and we went to lunch and as they say the rest is history.

And then here's a very famous one called 'Naked Nixon'.  You remember that one? It's been in a lot of museum exhibitions.

REPORTER:  Today the Oliphants are getting ready for a trip to his latest exhibition. 
You're going to the drycleaners?

PAT OLIPHANT: If you'll excuse me. Do you have any dry cleaning?

REPORTER: Yes, there's a few shirts I'd like you to take in if you don't mind, please?

PAT OLIPHANT: Would you take that one off?

REPORTER: I don't want to embarrass you.

PAT OLIPHANT: Oh no, what a horrible thought.

The University of Virginia is hosting a celebration of Pat Oliphant's recent work.

SUSAN OLIPHANT: Oh my gosh. And these are the sketches. The vitrines are beautiful.

For years, Pat gave away his original cartoons. But now, with the help of Susan, he's building up a substantial collection of his work

PAT OLIPHANT: So this one is the celebration of the spring at St Paedophilia's, the 'Annual Running of the Altar Boys.'

REPORTER: And that caused a bit of a stink did it

PAT OLIPHANT: Yeah, although the newspaper, the Catholic reporter liked it and ran it. They're liberal. One of my favourite targets is Cheney. He went out hunting with a friend of his one day and inadvertently shot his friend. And I always thought wouldn't it be nice if he took Bush hunting.

To compliment Pat's work, the university's museum is also showing drawings by the 19th century French artist that inspired him.

PAT OLIPHANT: Daumier's been my hero since I can remember. Went to jail a few times for insulting the King and the government. And the drawings are so good, the drawings are so beautiful. That's always been a model for me.

Pat Oliphant is a shy and humble man. He's content to let his art do the talking for him. So to assist him with the opening festivities, he's recruited his good friend and fellow artist Bill Dunlap.

REPORTER: What's so special about Pat's work?

BILL DUNLAP, ARTIST: Well, it's the shameless narrative in all of them. We are all making art when story telling is anathema, when you're not supposed to have your art say anything. And Pat has flown right in the face of that. He's continued a great tradition and at the same time makes very contemporary edgy art of it all. When the sculpture and the drawings are together, they are the most powerful indictment of our time and place. It's just kinda extraordinary.

To cap off the trip, Pat is guest of honour at a university event. And once again, he is sketching for the audience.

PAT OLIPHANT: And the second ritual is the donning of the rubber gloves. I'm going to work with charcoal tonight. Politicians are dirty, dirty people. And cartooning and proctology have an awful lot in common. Which of you guys is first?

Barack Obama's victory has presented an unusual problem for both Pat and his friend the political satirist, P.J. O'Rourke.

P.J. O’ROURKE, POLITICAL SATIRIST: Both of us are in an awful situation because we have got this President that everybody likes, that hasn't done anything wrong. Plus his kids are cute, his wife is beautiful. Dammit. I'll be very interested to see how Pat portrays. Pat usually gets the inner evil to come out. So far we're not sure Obama's got any yet - we're hoping.

PAT OLIPHANT: God bless his ears anyway.

P.J. O’ROURKE: When you look at one of Pat's caricatures you see the character of the person for good or for ill. And I don't think anybody's - well any old cartoonist could do it with Nixon. But most cartoonists are not capable of that. They're not that good as artists and they're not that good as thinkers.
That's 'Sarah and the Moose'. Daddy, read 'Sarah and the Moose' again.

PAT OLIPHANT: That's got to be darker I think.

With the festivities over, Pat gets back to his working routine. He's grappling with how to portray America's new president.

REPORTER: What's he saying?

PAT OLIPHANT: Last chance to demand a recount, Mr O. Everybody's pinning a lot of hope on this guy. It's a hell of a weight considering what trouble we're in.

After more than 50 years in the business, and accolades galore, Pat should be ready for retirement. Instead he wants to keep on drawing, and keep holding politicians to account.

PAT OLIPHANT: Being a cartoonist is a great privilege really. I can say things that people want to say. I'm fortunate enough to have a forum in which to say it. And express the feelings of many people.