Breaking Through The Lines

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  This shot in today’s NYT, summing up the Gates confirmation hearing, only differs in degree from today’s single photo  on the White House website.

Its been pretty strange comparing the visual and written narrative concerning the White House and the war since the mid-term election.  (As if there was any other White House story line these days!)  Although thoroughly trained on his political problems, the textual media still credits Bush with a good degree of authority and control.  The pictures, on the other hand, beg to differ.  The visuals, day-by-day, reveal a White House repeatedly subjugated and embarrassed by unplanned or improvised events.  It is  consistently minimized and overshadowed by other players, be it the Iraqis, the Saudis, Congress or members of the Iraq Study Group.

Today’s photo is the latest example.

In this case, Bush’s new man at the Defense Department (who shall remain faceless) serves (by proxy, at the hand of these encroaching photographers) as the object of boundary-free circumspection by a restive public and a less seduced and submissive media.

In an almost a complete flip from pre-invasion days, scrutiny has broken through the lines.

(image: Doug Mills/The New York Times.  December 6, 2006.  nytimes.com)