Presidential hopeful John McCain's photo-op in a grocery store got a little messy last week as a shelf of applesauce spilled onto the floor. What's interesting about this video showing McCain's visit is that even tightly managed media campaigns can sometimes turn out not as they were planned.
The objective of a photo-op is to convey a carefully constructed visual message about the campaign's strategy to the voters. The campaign has a prescribed image it wants the public to remember about the candidate. When something goes awry, the original message is replaced by a new and more unintended message. Howard Dean's campaign for president found this out the hard way. The media, in general, has become less about information these days and more about entertainment. When Dean howls on camera, or when John McCain's presence is overshadowed by applesauce, the reportage quickly moves from substantive content to a Saturday Night Live spoof. Presidential elections have increasingly become focused on controlling image and perception not on solving our nation's greatest problems. Honestly, people have so little patience for coming to terms with the big issues at stake thanks in large part to how media operates in this economy. But it's not all the media's fault here. In fact, a lot of this has to do with how culture evolves. Politics is all about image. Many times, it's not what is said, but how it is said.