structural:summarization
Political views

Geisel was a liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. His early political cartoons show a passionate opposition to fascism, and he urged action against it both before and after the U.S. entered World War II. His cartoons portrayed the fear of communism as overstated, finding greater threats in the House Committee on Unamerican Activities and those who threatened to cut the U.S.'s "life line" to the USSR and Stalin, whom he once depicted as a porter carrying "our war load".

Geisel supported the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in order to prevent possible sabotage. Geisel explained his position:

But right now, when the Japs are planting their hatchets in our skulls, it seems like a hell of a time for us to smile and warble: "Brothers!" It is a rather flabby battle cry. If we want to win, we've got to kill Japs, whether it depresses John Haynes Holmes or not. We can get palsy-walsy afterward with those that are left.

After the war, Geisel overcame his feelings of animosity and re-examined his view, using his book Horton Hears a Who! (1954) as an allegory for the American post-war occupation of Japan, as well as dedicating the book to a Japanese friend.

Geisel converted a copy of one of his famous children's books, Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!, into a polemic shortly before the end of the 1972–1974 Watergate scandal, in which U.S. president Richard Nixon resigned, by replacing the name of the main character everywhere that it occurred. "Richard M. Nixon, Will You Please Go Now!" was published in major newspapers through the column of his friend Art Buchwald.

The line "a person's a person, no matter how small" from Horton Hears a Who! has been used widely as a slogan by the pro-life movement in the United States. Geisel and later his widow Audrey objected to this use; according to her attorney, "She doesn't like people to hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front their own points of view." In the 1980s, Geisel threatened to sue an anti-abortion group for using this phrase on their stationery, according to his biographer, causing them to remove it. The attorney says he never discussed abortion with either of them, and the biographer says Geisel never expressed a public opinion on the subject. After Seuss's death, Audrey gave financial support to Planned Parenthood.