The politicians in the second panel belong to the governing coalition. For the opposition, substitute “external fault” or something similar for “our fault”.
I recently read the following note in a scanned version of this comic strip: “Miss Wormwood: As a few readers guessed, Miss Wormwood is named after the apprentice devil in C. S. Lewis’s ‘The Screwtape Letters’. I have a lot of sympathy for Miss Wormwood. We see hints that she’s waiting to retire, that she smokes too much, and that she takes a lot of medication. I think she seriously believes the value of education, so needless to say, she’s an unhappy person.” I believe it comes from Bill Watterson himself.
I suspect this is the real reason for the disappearance of the Neanderthals.