IN HIS ELEMENT
The new issue of Esquire (with the J.Lo pinup cover) features a series of photos of Democratic presidential candidates "in their natural habitats." We see Dick Gephardt, his wife, and daughters cooking a super high-fat dish called "party chicken," Bob Graham playing with his grandkids, Al Sharpton and his wife at their favorite soul-food place, and so on. The captions, by photographer Michael Edwards, describe how the shots were set up, and they generally make the candidates sound like pleasant guys--with one big exception. I did not make this first sentence up:
Senator Kerry's initial idea for the shoot was to pose with his wife on the type of gunboat he captained in the Vietnam War. But in the end, the choice of location was dictated by when I could actually get the senator and his wife in the same place. When I entered his house in Washington, I was impressed by the art collection. It seemed every wall was adorned with a Dutch master or an exotic artifact. The senator's press people were conscious of this and didn't want the shot to seem overdone, so there were various discussions about where to shoot. When he entered the phone, he had his phone to his ear, where it remained for most of the shoot. He told me it was an ambassador on the other end and at one point offered me the hang-loose sign with his free hand. And for most of the shoot he had a very "go go go" attitude, but at the same time, he seemed a bit like a grown-up kid, flopping down on the chair, throwing his leg over the armrest, loosening his tie a bit.
Kerry is on the phone in the photo, looking away from the camera, while his wife faces forward and gestures as though she's throwing something at us. Compared even to the awkward-looking Howard Dean, it's not a flattering picture. Kerry seems self-absorbed, and his wife seems weird. As Mickey Kaus has often said, people just don't like that guy.
BTW, on p. 32 in the same issue, Esquire's list of "Things a Man Should Never Do Past the Age of 30" includes, as item #3, "Flash the hang-loose hand sign, even if he is actually hanging loose." Nope, they don't like him at all.