Image Politics Quotes

Our national politics has become a competition for images or between images, rather than between ideals.

I'm really interested in how we view the public figure, what makes a public figure, what makes a celebrity, and how images make politicians, so I take an interest in politics, but it's really an interest in the image.

Television changed politics forever. If you’re not any good at it, forget it.

Scottish politics, U.K. politics, is not really like American politics in this respect. Not everybody is absolutely obsessed with image. I'm not saying the United States is obsessed with image.

Television has changed how we choose our leaders. It elected Ronald Reagan and a host of Kennedy-look-alike congressmen with blow-dried hair and gleaming teeth. It destroyed Senator Joe McCarthy by showing him in action and it created Jerry Falwell.

If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a President fresh from a war victory.

That night image had replaced the written word as the natural language of politics.

As the age of television progresses, the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

Washington has become such a mercenary culture that there is no real political culture left. The defining exchange is money, not ideas, not problem-solving. We live in a democracy of money and images.

Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.

A woman's body and a woman's image is a very political thing, so I trust another woman to understand what that's like and how to portray it in a way people can relate to.

Tamil people are generally considered very intelligent. But there, politics runs in a different way. Movie stars have a larger-than-life image in Tamil Nadu, and people vote for that image.

Yet it's true that looks matter in politics... It is also true that perfecting the outer shell has become an obsession in this country... Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and John Edwards almost always look good, and pretty much the same, in dark suits or casual wear. Fred Thompson always looks crepuscular and droopy. Often Hillary Clinton looks great, and sometimes she looks tired, heavier or puffier.