Crimson: Do you manage to watch TV and put off working until the very last minute?

Feiffer: I don't wait till the night before. I've done it occasionally and I've been sorry afterward, because something that seems terrific when you're in a hurry seems trite afterwards. Usually I write the cartoons first, then draw them. Sometimes I change my original idea--like from a political figure to a symbol of the "innocent victim." That's as opposed to Bernard, Johnson or Nixon. They are guilty figures.

Crimson: How are you doing with Ford?

Feiffer: I was really at a loss with Ford in the beginning. He's just a large, incompetent oaf. He has no malice and I don't think there was any deal with Nixon. Nixon never took seriously the signs that he would be impeached. Jerry was kind of impeachment insurance. "With a dope like Jerry in office, they'll never impeach me." He was always too cynical.

But I have to deal with an image, a fix. I didn't know how to deal with LBJ until he became a war criminal and I didn't know how to deal with Ford until the pardon.

Crimson: How about doing Rockefeller or Kissinger--I haven't seen you do either of those.

Feiffer: Well, Rockefeller is every publisher's favorite millionaire. Why? His family connections don't hurt. All the very things that I have against him enchant vast portions of the middle class: his life style, his money. He's a Renaissance man who loves modern art and is philanthropic.

But he's got all the sensitivity of a clod. That's what we have in the White House now. An oaf and a clod-designate. His wife gets breast cancer and he comes out before the cameramen saying, "Wow, you guys aren't going to believe this..." Waving around family crises--it's both tacky and typical.

I need a tightness of focus on these guys to make them explicable in certain cartoon terms. I haven't gotten a good Kissinger either. There is something about him that eludes me. I've been lazy about it too. But maybe it's something I have about underlings. I've never been able to do a McNamara either. I can't make a connection between their bodies and what they stand for.

Crimson: So that's why you do presidents?

Feiffer: My interest in presidents has been in terms of style and approach. We don't think of a Dulles or an Acheson period. But the shape the country took changed like the style of dress between Kennedy and Eisenhower.

The important thing is who is in power. Basically we've had the same 12 guys--whether they are bankers or foundation presidents--who are behind the foreign policy thing. We have a government of guys who went to the same schools and who have shaped our ideas of what is right or wrong. Up until Vietnam, most of us and certainly the entire media bought these views without any kind of cavil.

Crimson: What are you planning on doing in the next year or so?

Feiffer: Well, I want to do something that isn't being done. I'd like to do much more on the system of government. There has never been any systemized assault. It won't do just to show Jerry on a string or Kissinger as a stooge--it's going to take more work than that. I'm working on some more plays and a novel that I hope that I can finish in the next six months.