Special (Photo) Ops

If you’ve been following the wires, the tactic of surrounding Bush with service men and women has reached almost manic proportions.  It’s one thing to put Dubya on a chow line, but this shot — taken yesterday during a “visit” with the US Coast Guard in Miami — hardly pretends to be incidental.

Let’s line up those war props — uh, I mean crewmen — then have the commander-in-cheese do a runway walk down the broom-swept dock doing his old “smoke ’em out of their holes” strut.  Shoot it from a low vantage so that Everyman — with the rolled-up shirtsleeves — looks as big as the ship.  Make him perfectly centered with the bridge and lined-up with the vertical red stripe to connote the utmost symmetry (cognitively contradicting the fact that absolutely nothing lines up anymore).  Have him move left-to-right, as if he’s always transitioning from the past, yet always  (only) halfway.

But next time, kill that self-conscious business with the lips.  It clashes with the upward (optimistic), far-off (has the “vision thing”) look.

(…Oops, and there is an American flag.  It’s in the insignia — close to the real power!)

(revised for clarity: 7:20 am 8/1/06)

(image : Paul J. Richards/AFP – July 31, 2006.  Via YahooNews.)