In modern day politics, a candidate's image means a lot. Nothing is left to chance, everything is calculated. Even kos mentions, a candidate needs to invest in good photos.
The day after Barack Obama clinched the Democratic Nomination, and egged on by the observation that McCain is killing himself via lack of good video, I spent a couple of minutes perusing John McCain's website.
What I noticed after only a couple of pages, is that it seemed to be every picture of McCain only showed him from his right side.
I have performed a rudimentary analysis of the self-promoted (and thus carefully controlled) images of the Republican presidential nominee, the results after the jump.
I'm no human-face modeling expert, hell, I'm not even an amateur, so if there are people out there who do this for a living, cut me a break (or at least suggest the real way to do it). But I at least wanted to give everyone a diary worth reading, not just questions and work for other people.
Methodology
I have looked around at nearly every page I could find on McCain's website on one specific day (June 5th 2008), and graded each photo of McCain based upon this scale:
Full left profile (FL) -- one can only see the left side of his face, opposite eye not visible
Quarter left profile (QL) -- one can see the left side of his face, opposite eye visible
Full frontal (FF) -- one can see both eyes, cheeks, and ears
Quarter right profile (QR) -- one can see the right side of his face, opposite eye visible
Full right profile (FR) -- one can only see the right side of his face, opposite eye not visible
Note that I only used recent photos of McCain that could be reasonably considered to be "portrait" shots-- head shots, not in a group with others, and taken from a close perspective. So, for example, an impromptu wide-angle shot of him and his whole family on stage somewhere would not be considered in my analysis. A close-up of him on a stage, giving a speech, that would count, since one could reasonably assume that a variety of such shots from all different angles could be obtained, and the "best one" chosen by his campaign to be put on his website.
Copyright note: I would contend these images are all taken from his publicly viewable website, and I am offering them here as part of a fair-use critique. If there is any doubt whatsoever that perhaps this is a copyright violation, I will gladly remove them. I'll leave it up to the best judgment of those who run this site.
The Data: Some Examples
First and foremost: The front page
The first thing anyone sees on any site is the top banner.
Guess what, it's quarter right (QR)!
But right below that, is a FF.
At the bottom are a variety of images in a slideshow format, including one of Clint Eastwood and Cindy McCain (Dirty Harry and Cruella DeVille, together at last!). One of those is a big stage group shot, one is FR, and three more FFs.
Totals for front page:
FL: 0
QL: 0
FF: 4
QR: 1
FR: 1
McCain Store: Buy a button!
On the top:
Add some Maverick to your flair collection:
What is interesting to me is that this button below is the only photo on the entire site I could find that, although small, clearly shows McCain's scar on his left temple.
Also worth noting is the overall lack of merch in his store that has any depiction of him whatsoever; of the 33 distinct categories in his store, 31 do not contain a single item that contains his portrait. Buttons and lapel pins, that's it.
Totals for the McCain Store:
FL: 1
QL: 0
FF: 8
QR: 5
FR: 2
Download Center: A plethora of McCain images.
Totals for the Download Center:
FL: 0
QL: 0
FF: 4
QR: 23
FR: 0
Elsewhere on the site
You'll have to take my word for this, I went through every clickable link I could find.
Totals for rest of site:
FL: 0
QL: 2
FF: 1
QR: 2
FR: 0
FYI, I did not include subdomains under McCain's site (lawyers.johnmccain.com, women.johnmccain.com, or veterans.johnmccain.com), mostly because they are devoid of photos of McCain.
Conclusions
Grand Totals for entire site:
FL: 1
QL: 2
FF: 17
QR: 31
FR: 3
total N = 54
Based upon my rather simple analysis of the photographic evidence presented by his campaign website, John McCain prefers his right side (QR + FR = 34) to be presented over his left side (FL + QL = 3) by a margin of over 11:1. As a percentage of total portraits,
Left: 100*(1 - 51/54) -> 6%
Full frontal: 100*(1 - 47/54) -> 31%
Right: 100*(1 - 20/54) -> 63%
There is a clear and discernible bias towards presenting the right side of John McCain's face.
Discussion
Everyone and their mother knows that John McCain has had four separate instances of melanoma lesions removed from his face, and as a preemptive measure, the lymph nodes and parotid salivary gland on the left side of his face removed. The swelling from that procedure remains to this day.
As his own website explains,
To answer what appears to be numerous questions about the prominence of the Senator's left jaw: this is a result of an absence of soft tissue on the face in front of his ear that makes the masseter (the chewing muscle) over the jaw appear more prominent. To be clear, the swelling is not due to any evidence of cancer.
Facts are facts. John McCain has had cancer, thank goodness his treatments thus far have been successful, and now he has a nominal facial prominence as a result. Are he (or his handlers) ashamed of this? Do they wish to deemphasize his health vulnerabilities, by almost always presenting his right ("healthy") side, 63% of the time?
Is this some sort of subliminal message, a Rovian visual version of playing Stairway to Heaven backwards?
I don't know. Your guess is mine. If I could, I would leave you with another guy that only showed his right side... Two Face. (but I'm pretty sure that's a violation... so use your imagination).
Future Work
Can you tell yet, that I was once an academic, and my partner is one too?
What I didn't do was "weigh" the value and position of each photo in relation to each other; surely the banner pic would have more value in this scenario, than a measly swag button buried deep in the online store. But hey, this is just a first approximation here. Maybe in another diary, if the people demand it! People Powered Research, FTW!
Perhaps something similar could be done for BarackObama.com. Any takers?
Also, maybe another analysis could be done again in a couple of weeks, like a tracking poll, see how/if the presentation of the candidate(s) changes over time.
I hope you enjoyed this, thank you for reading.