By PLS
The President looks more like a New York subway strap-hanger than a sturdy can-do builder in the latest White House photo fiasco, the one designed to upstage the release of the Senate report on FEMA’s feeble response to hurricane Katrina. And the President’s expression is that smarmy, much too familiar “look-ma-no-hands” smirk of self-regard and self-satisfaction. He thinks he’s getting away with it.
It’s six years into the Bush Presidency and still the executive handlers allow that off-putting expression of smugness slip through. I’d have worked on erasing smirks from the Bush smile vocabulary from day one, which doesn’t mean that I’d have succeeded either. You have to work with what you’ve got.
I’ve arranged my share of photo ops for dignitaries, and I know that there’s no perfect control. You envision the ideal shot. You set it up. You put tape on the floor (or ground). You brief the principals. Then a photographer shouts “Do this!” or “Look here!” and catches a fleeting gesture or expression that’s all too telling. For example: the patient but disgusted look on Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco’s face as she pretends to grip the unifying prop (a 2 x 4?) whose structural function I can’t make out. (With her other hand she firmly, very convincingly grasps a hammer. If I were to put a speech balloon by her head, it would say something like, “God, I’d love to bash this jerk on the bean!”)
There’s an idiocy here that's really simple and didn’t have to happen, though. It doesn’t pop out so clearly on the on the NYT website, because the image is cropped along the bottom, but it shows up with glaring obviousness in the photo that appeared in the 4/28/06 print issue, which I have scanned and included here.
Focus on the carpenters’ aprons, especially the President’s. Pristine white with knife-like creases and sharp corners, it’s brand new and just a moment earlier been unfolded and fastened around a slightly paunchy presidential waistline. Obviously staged. And note this bit of theater, too: the President’s hammer sticks out of the same pocket as Gov. Blanco’s—facing the photographers, of course. I can imagine an intern darting in to position the hammers just before the flash bulbs went off.
OK. If both Bush and Blanco are right-handed, the hammers may be in the action pocket, but the photo still looks hokey. This is steamy New Orleans. But check out the underarms. No sweat. Poseurs all.
One good thing here: no enormous banner screaming out the message du jour.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with photo ops as such. Visual images contribute to the historical record. Handled properly, they make an exceedingly effective public relations tool. But why, after all this time, are the President’s sessions still handled so incompetently? I can only guess that the combination of carelessness and overkill has to do with the contempt for the public that shines through every presidential smirk.
Polls suggest that the public, at last, is catching on.