It’s interesting to compare these photographs of the US Cabinet teams taken by Annie Liebowitz. The first is a series of shots of Obama’s team which appear in this month’s Vanity Fair. Two things leap out at you — the relaxed demeanour of the group, which might also be translated as unruffled or unready; and the artifice, the under-construction aesthetic of the stage they appear on. This is a photograph of a nebulous team, only part-formed and not yet a cohesive unit.
Almost half the subjects aren’t looking at the camera. Arne Duncan, secretary of education, plays with his shirt cuff and glances stage left. Robert Gates, the Republican secretary of defense, is making an odd finger point gesture, and seems preoccupied. Only Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, is fully alert and engaged in the process of being photographed. It’s a powerful photo, full of meaning, and one which we will infer more from as the years go by.
Already, the smiling Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination for secretary of health and human services because of an imbroglio involving $128,000 in unpaid taxes, which is has surely caused some embarrassment to President Obama.
Following them is a photograph taken in the Cabinet Room of the White House in December 2001. George W. Bush’s team resemble nothing so much as a gruesome gallery of white-collar criminals caught with their hands in the account ledgers. Their mundane arrogance is truly startling. Bush, jacket swept back and hands flamboyantly tucket into his pockets, stares at you and dares you to enter the frame. I suspect that if you had, Rumsfeld would have forcefully put the boot in.