I LIKE IKE…..
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/06/omg-i-like-ike/
It is crunch time for
another campaign season, but look around. Where are the smartphones? Where are
the satellite hookups? Where are the bloggers, the cable news crews, the “super
PAC” advisers, the teleprompters, the network teams, the YouTube watchdogs, the
tablet computers and the dare-we-even-mention-them digital cameras?
Dwight D.
Eisenhower’s presidential campaigns in 1952 and 1956 were the last not defined
by television, but by print, radio and newsreels. During Ike’s first bid, about
a third of American homes had televisions; by the time he left office in 1961,
networks were broadcasting in color, Richard M. Nixon had made a disastrously
untelegenic showing in a debate against John F. Kennedy, and nearly 90 percent
of the country had at least one television at home.
But a close look at
these photographs from the 1952 campaign — from a Southern swing captured by
George Tames and a trip to Iowa shot by Sam Falk — reveals not just how much
has changed in campaigns and their coverage, but also how much has remained the
same. Substitute Mitt Romney’s or Barack Obama’s face for Eisenhower’s, whether
with Photoshop or scissors and mucilage, and the shots could be from last
month. Campaigns often seem like gladiatorial contests, and many of the tropes
seen here — on the part of both the candidates and the photographers — seem
similarly timeless.
Really, what has
changed? The road to the White House still leads through Iowa, Florida and the
rest of the South; for the news media, the road to prime placement still
involves a candidate with his arms up in a V or a perfectly framed crowd shot.
The planes, the motorcades, the podiums, the marching bands, the waved banners,
the weary or energized troops of reporters, all seem to predate the technology
that evolved to deliver them into ever more craniums by ever more members of
the news media.
Harry S. Truman,
Eisenhower’s predecessor, welcomed photographers at the White House as
“first-class citizens,” Tames wrote in his book “Eye on Washington: The Presidents Who’ve Known Me.”
Eisenhower, by contrast, treated photographers as “not worthy of cultivating.”
These shots of Eisenhower as a candidate have an intimacy and immediacy often
missing after he took office and inserted his press secretary between himself
and the press corps. The candidate was open and accessible in a way he never
was as president — even in his sleep (Slides 1 and 2), exposed in a way few
candidates can afford to permit in these viral days.
One other change from
the campaign trail is worth noting. In his book, Tames describes switching back
and forth between Eisenhower’s camp and that of his rival, Adlai Stevenson.
When the photographer joked to Ike that he had just spent a week with the enemy
camp, Eisenhower corrected him. “I do not consider that an enemy camp,”
Eisenhower said, sharply. “He is my political opponent, and I have great
respect and admiration for Mr. Stevenson.”
Compared to the
propeller planes or manual typewriters in these shots, that sentiment is
positively ancient.