Candidates and their image makers do the best they can to project images that strike a chord among voters.

(This article is based on the PCIJ documentary, Papogi: The Imaging of Philippine Presidents, that will air on ABS-CBN 2 at 9 p.m., Friday, May 7, 2004.)

	Manuel Quezon tried to bring the presidency closer to the people by being photographed doing the things that common folk do, like planting rice. Unlike most farmers, though, the president donned rubber boots in the paddies. Quezon set the template for future Philippine presidents who up to now make the obligatory visit to the ricefields.

POLITICS is no longer just addition. In the age of mass media, politics is image making. Amplified by television and advertising, a politician's image in the public's collective mind is greater than the sum of his actual attributes, assets, and accomplishments.

Much of the behavior of 21st-century Filipino voters is based on images they have of Philippine government and society: Some of these images may have little basis in fact but they are very real to voters, so much so that even governance itself has become a competition for images or between images.

An effective president is one who has projected an effective image of himself. For this reason, a skillful spin doctor (more than, say, a good secretary of health) has become the star player of a president's team. After all, what would be the use of a good health-insurance scheme if the public did not perceive it as a manifestation of a leader's caring concern for her people? Then there's also the political opposition, which attempts to picture every act of governance as yet another opportunity for graft and corruption, the obligatory "goons" in the soap opera of Filipino politics. And so the show goes on, airing nightly on television and reviewed daily in the newspapers until the next elections. Fleeting images take on the feel of real life, and the public is entranced.

The primacy of image can be blamed partly on U.S. influence. U.S. politics has at always been more image- and personality-oriented than say, the party politics of Europe, which is marked by the distinct and widely divergent ideologies of contending parties. Our founding fathers starting from Manuel Quezon were ardent students of U.S. politics. Until he came along, Filipino politicians were mainly in the Spanish-schooled, 19th-century ilustrado mode of long speeches written in flowery prose and phrased in an alien tongue.

But Quezon belonged to the 20th century. Through his travels to the United States in the early 1900s, he became keenly ware of the influence of the mass media in politics and of how politicians could use newspapers, radio, and the cinema to reach lit to constituents.

The image that Quezon projected was of a strong leader, but also one who was reachable to the ordinary Filipino. Quezon made sure that the photographs and even the anecdotes that were disseminated about him conformed to this image. Although he was weak and tubercular, especially in the latter years of his presidency, the newspapers (many of which were owned by his cronies) showed him strong and healthy, unless it was politically useful for him to appear sick.

Most of all, Quezon projected himself as the man who was the embodiment of national pride, an equal to the foreigner, as tall, as good-looking, and as authoritative as they were. His mestizo good looks were definitely an asset. He was also always fashionably and very well dressed. Photographs of that era showed him either in regal and presidential poses — his head held high in the company of high U.S. officials or looking manly but also at ease in knee-high leather boots. This was, after all, the sort of leader who was needed at a time when Filipinos were negotiating independence from the United States: an important-looking man respected by the colonial masters but who also articulated the aspirations of his people.

Quezon was facile in both English and Spanish but was a Tagalog, so he spoke the native tongue quite well, thus strengthening the image of being equal to the Americans while also being accessible to his own countrymen. "His secret," says his grandson, columnist Manuel Quezon III, "was that even if he spoke English very well, he strived to communicate directly to the voters. He was the one who started speaking at town plazas, then climbing down the stage, and approaching people. He would disappear and his security men would find him at a sari-sari store, talking to people."

Quezon was therefore the precursor of the modem Filipino politician. His succesors would also strive for this simultaneous projection of power and accessibility It can be said that in their own ways Ramon Magsaysay, Ferdinand Marcos, even Joseph Estrada tried to do their own versions of the Quezonian politician, adding their own individual traits to the mold that had been cast by one of the most forceful and colorful leaders in Philippine history.

Unsurprisingly, photographs would show succeeding presidents in the poses that Quezon made famous: planting rice with farmers, being among ordinary folk, and holding the head high when in the company of foreigners.