N. Hampshire Final: The Good News: You Won! The Bad News: You’re Now Poster Boy for Downsizing

Looking for a take-away image for the New Hampshire results, this shot by Danny Wilcox Frazier (actually taken in Iowa) jumps out. If Romney departs the Granite State with an impressive win, he also limps out with all kinds of damage to his corporate persona. Besides the discrediting of his job creation claims, there is the Gingrich campaign characterizing Romney as capitalist destroyer, as well as the whole brouhaha over Romney liking to fire people.

In this cold, impersonal and seemingly oxygen-free portrait, most people allergic to almost any office scene at all, Romney is in his natural habitat. And then, nobody getting within a table’s length of Boss Friendly. Finally, you can just imagine the phone conversation in progress. “Yeah, friend. You’ve been great for us. (Cups receiver and shoots cohorts salivating glance) but I have to let you go.”

from TIME slideshow “On The Trail”