Say cheesy

Candidates used to worry about embarrassing photos. Now they're a fact of life.

By John Barry, Times Staff Writer
Published January 13, 2008

The funniest press photo of the presidential primaries so far shows a freezing Mike Huckabee in orange hat and earmuffs, hugging a shotgun, huddled over dead pheasants on a snowy Iowa plain. He looks like the last man on the planet - except for the TV boom mike overhead.

Unpresidential images have long been a hallmark of presidential campaigns. Two from the 1988 race are legendary: Gary Hart snuggling with Donna Rice aboard the good ship Monkey Business, and Michael Dukakis peeping out of a tank in necktie and helmet.

In those days, funny photos sank campaigns. Bob Martinez, Florida's Tampa-born governor from 1987 to 1991, well remembers how every politician kept a wary eye for big hats.

"My worst fear," he says, "was someone plopping a sombrero on my head."

Today, neither the press nor the politicians are in charge of image-making. You are. If you're packing a cell-phone camera, congratulations, you're a photojournalist, you're a videographer. The Internet gives you an audience of millions.

Would Dukakis' tank photo have mattered in 2008? Or would it have been lost, buried among millions of funny photos captured every day by you, the citizen journalist? Has the technology in your hands drowned the power of a single image?

As it turned out, those dead birds didn't hurt Huckabee one bit in Iowa. Didn't help him any, either, in New Hampshire.

The image that mattered most turned out to be the most unpresidential of all: Hillary Clinton on election eve in a Portsmouth, N.H., cafe - on the brink of defeat, suddenly vulnerable and very human.

No one watches out anymore for sombreros.

Chicago photographer John Gress chased presidential candidates more than 2,000 miles across Iowa for Reuters, one of 2,500 media outlets that covered the caucuses. He also covered the Iowa caucuses in 2004.

The difference between then and now: "In 2004, you didn't have three cell-phone cameras blocking your shot."

His first photo of Hillary Clinton this time around included a little boy in a barber shop quartet costume standing beside her. The little boy was aiming his camera.

"We are living in a new age of direct democracy," says GOP media strategist Adam Goodman. "There are tens of millions of faceless, nameless photographers out there. The controls are completely off."

Everyone's a photographer, everyone has the means to show their work to the world - especially photos that contain what media strategists call "the splat factor," that special dash of silliness. Explains Brad Crone, founder of the North Carolina consulting firm Campaign Connections: "Everyone likes hearing the splat."

More than 1-million sites come up in a Web search for "funny campaign photos." One site devotes itself entirely to Hillary Clinton.

It's called "The Really Truly Hillary Gallery" on zombietime.com. Much of the collection consists of snapshots by "citizen journalists." It shows her bug-eyed and cross-eyed, in a witch's hat, beside a Che Guevara poster, in a bad pair of shorts, and picking her nose.

No one gets as much camera attention as Clinton does. But most of the presidential candidates can find themselves looking foolish somewhere. Huckabee can locate himself on slate.com when he was 100 pounds heavier. Rudy Giuliani can admire himself on politicalhumor.about.com dressed in drag at a costume party in 2000 where Donald Trump fondled his boobs.

And Fred Thompson can find himself looking like a basset hound - anywhere.

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Tony Welch, a former press secretary for the Democratic National Committee and now a Democratic media strategist, doesn't worry much about funny photos anymore.

"We're too used to seeing embarrassing things."

Welch believes funny photos began to lose their shock value in 2004 when a photo turned up that showed a young John Kerry with Jane Fonda at a Vietnam War protest rally.

The image was much ballyhooed on conservative Web sites, until it was exposed as a fake. After that, Welch says, people began to better understand computer photo manipulation.

Far more potent, says GOP consultant Goodman, are the fictional video spoofs on YouTube. "Those are the things that keep us up 24-7."

The "Obama Girl" video last June featured a beautiful girl in a tight T-shirt singing "Baby, I cannot wait/ til 2008/ Baby, you're the best candidate" to a Barack Obama campaign poster. It was viewed almost 5-million times on YouTube.

"It's an explosion of new media not governed by any rules," Goodman says. "And it's cut in half the life span of media consultants like me. We've been replaced by people who make videos in their bedroom."

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Bring on the sombreros.

Linda Epstein, the photo editor who handles all presidential campaign photography for the McClatchy Tribune News Service in Washington, has her favorite funny photos. Like the one that shows Huckabee and Chuck Norris in a guitar duet.

"Could a bad photo sway a vote? Possibly," she says. "But 'tis the season. Everyone knows that. The candidates know that. 'Tis the season."

If you want the prize badly enough, you do what you have to do.

She cites the story of the University of Northern Iowa student who recently asked every presidential candidate to pose for a picture with his Mr. Potato Head. It's hard to look dumber than that.

Only two said no - Joe Biden and Sam Brownback.

Neither of those guys made it past Iowa.

John Barry can be reached at jbarry@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2258.

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 16:49:24]