The Photo Op Presidency

Ronald Reagan perfected them, the Presidential Photo Opportunity - "photo op" for short. The flags, the Berlin Wall, the sympathetic victim of some moral outrage - all props put on the set to make the president look presidential. Even the President was a prop at the end.

Bill Clinton, well, he could stand in a dumpster and he would be - not just look - Presidential.

With President Bush we know that the photo op is Job #1 (see: Mission Accomplished). Make the Pres look good, and we'll work out the details later. Make him seem to be involved, and the masses will follow. Give him a bullhorn, and the terrorists will quiver in their caves and throw down their arms.

Karl Rove most cynically and famously described the proposition that politics is TV with the sound turned off. He may have been right.

But with hurricane season in full force and the failures of his administration in full bloom, the president has to be involved again in the heavy task of rebuilding his credibility. His polls are in the toilet, his team is disintegrating amid scandal and corruption and incompetence, and New Orleans is the first secondary victim of another unprecedented hurricane.

So Bush is trotted out to NorthCom and to take make the op at FEMA.

They are all pretty pictures with the sound turned off. Yet rising flood waters make very little noise. You wake up with a feeling of dread and step into a cesspool. A President who can't even pretend to care does not need a soundtrack. No words are needed. No description is adequate.

His expression says it all. The conclusion is inescapable. The failure is undeniable. The predictions all came true, and he ignored the results.