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The ability of a single image to influence and shape history has long been a part of American politics. Even before there was a United States of America, Paul Revere's masterful — and grossly inaccurate — engraving of the Boston Massacre helped solidify colonial support for a break with Great Britain. In more recent times, specific images from presidential campaigns have been deemed instrumental in deciding the outcomes of elections. Lyndon Johnson's infamous 1964 daisy commercial, although aired only once, helped crystallize the image of Republican opponent Barry Goldwater as a dangerous, hot-headed militant. The sight of Edmund Muskie's breaking down as he defended his wife's honor outside the offices of Manchester Union Leader almost certainly cost him the 1972 Democratic nomination for president. And video footage of 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis' attempting to show his support for the military by riding around in a tank while popping his head up and down in a Snoopy-like manner was the object of so much derision that opponent George Bush's campaign incorporated it into an anti-Dukakis commercial. Images are easily manipulated, however, and President George H.W. Bush (father of President George W. Bush) found himself the victim of one during his failed re-election bid in 1992. The fun began during a primary season photo opportunity on 5 February, as President Bush dropped by a National Grocers Association convention in Orlando. One of the exhibits Bush visited was a demonstration of NCR's checkout scanning technology, an event New York Times reporter Andrew Rosenthal turned into a chiding front page story about Bush's lack of familiarity with the details of ordinary life in America: Editorial writers were quick to seize on the notion that President Bush's amazement demonstrated he had never seen a supermarket scanner before and criticized him for being out of touch with the daily concerns of ordinary Americans: Then the details of the story started to dribble out. Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times hadn't even been present at the grocers' convention. He based his article on a two-paragraph report filed by the lone pool newspaperman allowed to cover the event, Gregg McDonald of the Houston Chronicle, who merely wrote that Bush had a look of wonder on his face and didn't find the event significant enough to mention in his own story. Moreover, Bush had good reason to express wonder: He wasn't being shown then-standard scanner technology, but a new type of scanner that could weigh groceries and read mangled and torn bar codes. The New York Times then defended Rosenthal's original article by reviewing videotape of the event and proclaiming that both ordinary and newfangled scanners had been demonstrated for President Bush, and that he was clearly unfamiliar with and impressed by the former: The New York Times seemed to be one the only major print medium to take this view of the event, however. Newsweek screened the same tape and reported: Bush acts curious and polite, but hardly amazed. Michael Duffy of Time magazine called the whole thing completely insignificant as a news event. It was prosaic, polite talk, and Bush is expert at that. If anything, he was bored. And Bob Graham of NCR, who demonstrated the scanner technology for President Bush, said, It's foolish to think the president doesn't know anything about grocery stores. He knew exactly what I was talking about. And no one heaping scorn on Bush seemed to consider that people typically react very differently when they get to try for themselves technology they have previously only passively experienced being handled by others, no matter how common it might be. A stethoscope is hardly a cutting edge medical tool, for example, but how many times have we seen non-doctors react with amazement when they put one in their own ears for the first time and a listen to a live human heartbeart? What it all came down to was that President Bush (whose popularity rating had been at a record high just a year earlier) became the scapegoat for an economic recession. Once the hoopla over the Persian Gulf War receded into the past and Americans once again turned their attention to more mundane matters (i.e., money), Bush's public image shifted from conquering hero to politician befuddled by economic matters. He had told us that a recession wouldn't happen, and now that it was here, all he had to say about it was that it would end soon. Even if Bush had been in a grocery store or two since the advent of scanners, everybody knew he had people to do his shopping for him, and therefore it was easy to paint a picture of him as someone who no more knew how to handle the economy than he knew the price of a carton of milk or a loaf of bread. All that was needed was a hook to hang the picture on, and Bush's encounter with a scanner at the National Grocers' Convention provided it.
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