Signs

The signs of a gradually failing presidency are all around us: Poll numbers showing a majority of Americans no longer trust the Bush Administration, and believe the Iraq war was a mistake from the beginning. Investigations and indictments. A legislative agenda that's all but flat-lined. The foot-soldiers in the congressional GOP in near total disarray.

Now add to that list a casualty that may be less of a threat to the body politic than some of those just mentioned, but still has to sting, since it was a signature of the once-unstoppable Bush machine: The heroic, iconic photo op.

Sure, all Presidents get to pose for pictures in the Oval Office, or in the Rose Garden, or in front of enormous American flags. Nothing unusual there.

Part of the genius of Team Bush was its unerring instincts when it came to steering their boy into memorably composed photo ops on location. Their attention to perspective, and to the camera angle they would set up for the photographers, led to some legendary images:





They pushed the use of those subliminal-message backgrounds--not always readable from the audience but perfectly sized and positioned for the TV camera--to the next level:



Even when it came back to bite them later, it wasn't because the image wasn't orchestrated perfectly. The stage was always set to produce a juxtaposition of images that would persist in our memory like a flash bulb or a cola jingle:



But this time the once-surefooted advance team seems to have stumbled. See for yourself: This time they've actually managed to engineer a platform photo of Bush that not only doesn't measure up to Bush at the ruins of the World Trade Center, bullhorn in hand, telling America's enemies they'd "hear from us soon"--it's barely even office-friendly.

The end is near.

(Thanks to a long line of blogs winding up at Shakespeare's Sister.)