Like it or not, politics is often a game of appearances. How things look. A strong visual can make a campaign or kill it. That’s why this photo of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is worth talking about, and not for good reasons if you’re in the El-Sayed camp.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is reported to be 5 feet, 4 inches tall, yet in this photo she appears taller than El-Sayed. Even with average-sized heels on her part, this is still not a good look for a candidate who’s constantly running around huffing and puffing about his manliness.

In that cringeworthy photo with AOC and El-Sayed, Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) stands at an average height for a man at 6 feet tall, and yet he towers over El-Sayed, who clearly looks like the shortest one in this photo. But it’s not just the fact that he’s vertically challenged. While voters may not always know in detail what they are looking at, they almost always know in sum what they are seeing.

Sit in any focus group on candidate videos or photos, and you’d be amazed at how harsh even well-meaning participants can become without trying to be. Just by pointing out the things they see, it can be humbling for a candidate. Everything from how tight-fitting and unflattering the candidate's shirts and pants can be, to an unattractive beard or haircut - all can and do come up in discussion.

Pardon me for being picky here, but if El-Sayed were my client, I’d have to gently tell him what’s not working for him, visually, so that he can make the sort of changes that will give his critics less to work with. But he's not my client, and since in this case, I count myself as one of this commie’s critics, I’m not going to try to soften the blows.

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If that standard-sized smartphone in his all-too-tight set of trousers is any indication, he’s a really small man. The phone’s length covers half his upper leg, sending an obvious but almost subliminal message to voters that this is a very small man.

His shoes poke out like elf shoes. This can be mitigated by different shoes and pants, so we have to assume that this is his preferred look. 

The two people alongside him have normal wingspans for their size, while his arm length seems short. His posture here, rather than projecting leadership, makes him look like these two fellow commies just pulled him off the canvas after a two-round knockout, and he was on the losing end of that last punch.

I'm not sure what's going on with his facial expression, but it doesn't put him in the plus category for voters. And please, let’s not talk about those armpits. I mean, anyone who sees this photo realizes why men should wear good undershirts and suit coats when standing in front of crowds and the media. Okay, let’s talk about those armpits. Do you really think AOC and Bernie want to be standing there at that moment? I think not. P.U.

To cap it all off, El-Sayed is just a lousy dresser, wearing pants and a shirt more fitting for a copier salesman at the end of a 14-hour day than someone who wants to play a role in determining the fate of the most powerful nation in the world.

Imagery like this hurts candidates. It detracts from his expensive and carefully curated image, which has served to fake more than a few voters into thinking he’s more charismatic than he is.

As critical as I’m being of El-Sayed, I can’t give AOC the same treatment here, and I really don't like her. But since we're talking about superficial things for the moment, her visual polish is in such contrast with El-Sayed that her standing alongside him only makes him look less ready for prime time.

Her posture, her presence, her facial expression, and her clothes all suggest that she’s confident and aware of the optics she’s trying to create.

If this photo were widely circulated, I think it could be the El-Sayed “tank photo.” If you’re not familiar with that term, it’s the photo that played a role in killing the presidential bid of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988.

As Politico put it, “Dukakis and the tank. The image of the diminutive Massachusetts governor pretending to be something he wasn’t and, in the process, making a fool of himself on Sept. 13, 1988.”

More to the point, Dukakis, who may be taller than El-Sayed, participated in a photo op at a tank factory to try to help him project a more serious commander-in-chief vibe as he campaigned against Vice President George H.W. Bush. Some genius decided it would be a good idea to place the candidate inside a tank and put a helmet on him that ended up making him look like a bobblehead doll.

This is from Politico: “Matt Bennett can still hear the reporters laughing, all 90 of them. He can still picture Sam Donaldson doubled over, guffawing, on a riser that looked out over a dusty field in suburban Detroit. Bennett was a 23-year-old political rookie in 1988 when he was sent to a General Dynamics facility in Sterling Heights, Mich., to organize a campaign stop for Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis: a ride in a 68-ton M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. The visit, meant to bolster the candidate’s credibility as a future commander-in-chief, would go down as one of the worst campaign backfires in history.”

Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that Dukakis’s photo op that tanked his campaign was taken in Michigan, where El-Sayed’s handlers seem to be losing their battle to make the voters think he’s someone he’s not. The Dukakis campaign’s miscalculation ended up giving the Bush campaign some valuable content it used for this ad, which scored big with voters.

We can only hope that Republican Mike Rogers’ campaign sees the value in this latest photo and finds similar success with this golden content opportunity El-Sayed has just handed to it.