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    Black women on what Harris’s loss says about the US: ‘Voters failed to show up for her’

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    In the hours after Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election bid and endorse Kamala Harris as the democratic nominee for president, 40,000 Black women – leaders in politics, business and entertainment – met on a Zoom call to rally around the vice-president.“We went from that call to organizing our house, our block, our church, our sorority, and our unions,” said Glynda C Carr, president and co-founder of Higher Heights, an organization that works to help Black women get elected to political office. “That is what we did for the 107 days that she ran for office. Black women used our organizing power around a woman that we knew was qualified, that had a lived experience.”View image in fullscreenFor many, Harris seemed to be the one woman to break the glass ceiling of reaching the highest office in the US. Harris, a graduate of Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington DC and a member of the country’s oldest Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc (AKA), who had become the first Black female vice-president after spending a career as a prosecutor, California’s attorney general and senator, had reached a point where voters would welcome a woman – many deemed to be beyond qualified – versus Donald Trump, an embattled former president then awaiting sentencing on more than three dozen felony convictions.“Here is a woman that has had access to be able to build upon legacies and blueprints,” Carr said. Harris’s candidacy was so exciting because “she literally embodies Black excellence for Black women.”Harris’s 107-day campaign to become president began in a year of recognizing the anniversaries of pivotal advancements for Black people during the Jim Crow era and Civil Rights movement – 70 years after Thurgood Marshall, Constance Baker Motley and the NAACP dismantle school segregation; 60 years after Fannie Lou Hamer spoke at the 1964 Democratic national convention; and 52 years since Shirley Chisholm became the first woman and first Black to run for president.“It gave so much hope,” said Christian F Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women and part of generation X, who never thought she’d see a Black president – let alone a Black woman president. “It was like the opportunity and manifestation of our ancestors’ wildest dreams. That’s what I thought to myself like, if she is elected, this is what our ancestors have dreamt about, and women, and Black women have dreamt about our entire lives.”It was that hope that fueled a wide-range of support from Democratic leadership, including former president Jimmy Carter who cast his ballot for Harris weeks after turning 100. Republicans such as former congresswoman Liz Cheney and her father, Dick Cheney, who served as vice-president in the George W Bush administration. Bipartisan support, an aggressive and energized campaign with a huge funding arm from several groups supporting Harris wasn’t enough to overcome the second election of Trump, who saw growth in his voting base among Black and Latino voters. Trump garnered more than 75m votes as of Sunday evening, and won the popular vote for the first since he began his ascension to the White House.“Harris’s candidacy was working for unity and democracy and protecting freedom,” Nunes, 46, said. “Then we had another candidate who basically ran on a campaign to take away freedoms. I felt that this loss was not a reflection of her ability to lead. I felt like it was a reflection of voters who said that they would show up for her, but failed to show up for her. And also, people’s inability to trust women and stand up for women – particularly, especially a Black woman. And I feel like this continuously resonates and shows up in so many spaces and I think that’s the part that was hurtful.”View image in fullscreenTrump’s victory came from voters who were so put off by the US’s trajectory that they welcomed his brash and disruptive approach. About three in 10 voters said they wanted total upheaval in how the country is run, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. Even if they weren’t looking for something that dramatic, more than half of voters overall said they wanted to see substantial change.Both nationwide and in key battleground states, Trump won over voters who were alarmed about the economy and prioritized more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws. Those issues largely overshadowed many voters’ focus on the future of democracy and abortion protections – key priorities for Harris’s voters, but not enough to turn the election in her favor.Rarely has ethnicity, race or gender been mentioned in many after-election interviews, as reasons for not supporting Harris’s bid for president or why they preferred Trump, but some Harris supporters believe they were an underlying reason many will not admit to.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShavon Arline-Bradley, president and CEO of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) said Harris’s campaign of inclusion and strong support from the Democrats’ most loyal voting block – Black women – could not withstand “the wall of white nationalism and racism and classism and sexism and misogyny”.“It could not withstand the wall of an electorate that used class, race and gender to block the opportunity for an all-inclusive society that our country is so-called built on,” she said. “This idea of womanhood in leadership still becomes unfathomable for many.”New Orleans resident Laureé Akinola-Massaquoi is the mother of a two -year-old daughter, and said that Harris being the Democratic nominee for president, meant a more equal, progressive future for all of America, not just for Black people, but for everybody.But when Akinola-Massaquoi, 36, woke up on 6 November and saw that Trump had won the election, she was “disgusted, disappointed, just annoyed, really annoyed”.“Nowhere else can other people do the things he does or say the things he does, or have the record he has and become president of the United States. I just don’t even know how he even got this far,” she said. More

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      ‘There are images no leader ever wants to be seen’: 33 pivotal US presidential moments captured on camera

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      Is it any surprise that “photo op” is a phrase imported into British English from the United States? Of course it came from there, the land where the visual image sits right at the centre of the culture, with politics no exception. It was the Nixon White House that came up with it, specifically a press aide by the name of Bruce Whelihan. According to Washington legend, whenever the president was meeting a visiting dignitary, Richard Nixon’s hardball press secretary, Ron Ziegler, would turn to his underling with an order to summon the snappers. “Get ’em in for a picture,” Ziegler would say. Too polite to put it that way himself, Whelihan would clear his throat and announce to the ladies and gentlemen of the Washington press corps: “There will be a photo opportunity in the Oval Office.” The photo op was born.But if the term was new, the thing itself had been a part of US politics almost from the start. Just as Roman emperors sought to cast themselves in stone and Tudor kings commissioned the finest artists to capture their likeness, so American presidents moved fast to harness the new technology of the age, in order that the nation might see the men who governed them. The selection of photographs assembled here is made up of a series of striking images, but a couple are extraordinary less for what they show than for the fact that they exist at all.Behold a portrait of John Quincy Adams, sixth US president and the son of its second. A daguerreotype, it dates to March 1843), when Adams had been out of office for well over a decade, but still: it is the earliest known photograph of a US president, its subject a man born in 1767 and whose father was the successor to George Washington himself. Seeing the face of Abraham Lincoln induces a similar feeling of historical vertigo. If there’s a tendency to divide human events into two broad categories – our own, modern era and everything that went before – then the invention of the photograph can often be the instinctive dividing line between the two. But here are Adams and Lincoln, jumping over the barrier and barging their way into our own times.As for Nixon himself, he appears in this collection twice. That’s fitting, and not only because of the origin story of the photo op. Nixon learned the hard way that in modern American politics, image is everything. Washington legend holds that in their 1960 presidential debate, Nixon comfortably beat the young Massachusetts senator John F Kennedy among voters who followed the contest on the radio – but, his face darkened by five o’clock shadow, he lost among those who watched on TV. After that, Nixon was ready to put himself in the hands of the image-makers.One result is the intriguing photograph of the president and the king, Nixon and Elvis, standing improbably together in the White House in 1970. Showing two men both then at the height of their powers, both to fall just a few years later, the picture was long the most requested of all those held by the US National Archives). It fascinates partly because the pair represent polar opposites – a rock legend and a man so uncool he wore a suit on the beach) – and partly because it invites you to guess at the men’s motives: Nixon surely wanted some of Presley’s stardust to land on him, while Elvis was in search of a federal agent’s badge and, it seems, a sense of purpose.The other Nixon shot is the one that etched his downfall into the public imagination. It shows his parting gesture – an oddly celebratory, double V-for-victory salute – from the presidential helicopter as he made his disgraced exit following the Watergate scandal). Nixon flew off to California and into the history books as the first US president ever to quit.Between them, Elvis and Watergate, those pictures represent the two categories of presidential photograph: the ones they wanted – the photo ops – and the ones they most emphatically did not. The first category brims with examples and they follow a pattern. They show the occupant of the White House as a heroic, even mythic figure. The exemplar is Teddy Roosevelt on horseback, a hunter and adventurer who engaged in photogenic displays of muscularity and machismo so overt, they’d make Vladimir Putin blush. But that tradition has endured. Indeed, it has turned into an expectation that a US president must not only be competent and wise, but also fit, strong and marked by conspicuous physical courage.Meeting that demand has been easy for some occupants of America’s highest office. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t have to pretend to be a warrior: he had been the supreme allied commander during the second world war. When he first campaigned for the presidency in 1952, there was no need to stage a photo op: there were images aplenty of him directing the D-day mission) that had turned the war around just eight years earlier. No wonder he won.But for others, producing images of strength and command has taken some doing. The group portrait of Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Yalta ) had to have the so-called the Big Three seated because Roosevelt was paralysed from the waist down and required either a wheelchair or leg braces to get around. He and his aides went to great lengths to keep that fact from the US public and they mostly succeeded, thanks to a compliant press pack who obediently put away their cameras once the chosen image had been secured.That remained the custom for a while, the snappers keeping a discreet distance even after Eisenhower had both a heart attack and stroke in office, and as Kennedy battled crippling back pain. The images told a different story, including the silhouetted portrait of JFK standing alone at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, head bowed, a study in the loneliness of ultimate political authority). That photograph may lack the glamour or sparkle of other Camelot-era pictures, but it contributed to the Kennedy mystique – and the mythology of the presidency itself – every bit as much. This was the era of the cold war, of a nuclear standoff between the US and the USSR, and that desk was where the buck stopped. Here was where the button would be pressed – and here was the man who would press it.Naturally, this iconography of president-as-hero takes different forms, depending on who’s in the job. The image Jimmy Carter treasured from his single term in office cast him as successful peacemaker, bringing together Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Egypt in the Camp David peace accords. For supporters of Donald Trump, the picture that renders him a hero is the one taken a second after a would-be assassin’s bullet had brushed his ear, when he raised his fistand, with bloodied face, urged them to “Fight, fight, fight!”.Sometimes, though, the man at the top has struggled to meet that deep public need for an alpha figure in the White House. Carter’s political prospects took a hit when he was photographed “wobbling, moaning and pale with exhaustion” during a six-mile run in 1979). But the most recent, and serious, example is Joe Biden, whose visible frailty drove him from this year’s presidential race. The pictures showing him apparently slack-jawed during a June TV debate with Trump were enough to persuade Democrats that he had to go.Which brings us to the images no leader ever wanted to be seen. Some were photo ops whose aim was to offer a heroic, presidential figure, which went badly wrong. Michael Dukakis’s handlers wanted to project him as a potential commander-in-chief when they put him in a tank during the 1988 campaign); instead he looked like a hopeless dweeb. George W Bush’s team doubtless thought a Mission Accomplished banner on an aircraft carrier conveyed victorious strength following the invasion of Iraq; instead it came to haunt him as an emblem of hubris and myopia.But other unwanted images from this collection capture not mistaken bits of stage management, but rather tragedy and disaster. George W Bush reading My Pet Goat to a group of Florida schoolkids as he gets word of the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 distils the shock of 9/11, even now. The lifeless body of Robert F Kennedy evokes the turbulence and violence of 1968), a time when the US seemed about to tear itself apart.It’s all here: moments of hope – Barack Obama inspiring a young boy as America’s first Black president – and moments of despair – Lyndon Johnson taking the oath following JFK’s assassination while Jackie Kennedy, in blood-stained clothes, looks on. And yet, no matter how sweeping the range of these photographs, there is something missing from this selection. It would be lacking in any assembly of presidential pictures. Yes, there are Democratic presidents and Republican presidents. Yes, there are old presidents and young presidents. But there is no female president. We see Hillary Clinton, who got close. We see Shirley Chisholm, who was the first Black woman to try but never got near. Otherwise, there is an absence. On 5 November, Americans have a chance to fill that space – and to give the world a picture no one has ever seen before.Picture captions by Felix Bazalgette and Gabrielle SchwarzJimmy Carter collapses, 1979By Phil StewartView image in fullscreen“His face was ashen and his mouth hung open,” is how one reporter described Jimmy Carter in September 1979, when the president dropped out of a six-mile race four miles in. Though he swiftly recovered, this image – two months after his speech blaming US problems on a “crisis of confidence” – was seen as evidence of weakness. He lost to Ronald Reagan the following year. GSRichard Nixon bids goodbye, 1974Photographer unknownView image in fullscreen“Once more, there was not a spark of contrition in the man,” commented the Guardian at the time. On 8 August 1974, Richard Nixon earned the dubious honour of being the first (and, to this day, only) president to resign from office.Two years earlier, five men were caught trying to burgle and bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington DC. The subsequent investigation implicated Nixon, who faced impeachment for his role in covering up the break-in. Yet – as seen in this image of him leaving the White House for the last time – he was never really repentant. As he told David Frost in 1977, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” One month after he resigned, his chosen successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him. GSFDR at Yalta, 1945Photographer unknownView image in fullscreenFor eight days in February 1945, the “Big Three” – Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin – met in the Crimean city of Yalta to discuss allied strategy.“FDR’s position between the other leaders is significant,” Diana Preston, historian and author of Eight Days at Yalta. “It was appropriate for a man who hoped to reconcile conflicting interests and build a future peace.” The conference was at first deemed a success, but the Soviet leader soon broke his promises to allow free elections in eastern Europe, and the cold war began. GSTexts from Hillary Clinton, 2011By Kevin LamarqueView image in fullscreenIt was the photograph that launched a thousand memes before becoming a liability at election time. The image of Hillary Clinton texting in sunglasses aboard a military plane to Libya went viral, inspiring a popular blog called “Texts from Hillary”. CBS reported at the time: “Hillary Clinton brings the LOLZ” and Clinton even name-checked the authors of the blog in her first ever tweet, proudly setting the image as her avatar.By 2015, however, she would distance herself from it, dropping it from her Twitter profile when the FBI announced an investigation into her use of a private email address for government business. As the image became used in articles about the investigation, its meaning began to shift. Many people started to wonder what Clinton might have been writing on that Blackberry. The scandal came to a catastrophic peak just 11 days before the 2016 election, when FBI director James Comey announced that he was reopening the investigation after having closed it in July. FBTheodore Roosevelt, 1898Photographer unknownView image in fullscreenThis image of Roosevelt on a horse encapsulates the rugged masculinity the 26th president – in fact born into an aristocratic family in New York – strove to embody. Once a sickly child, he credited his recovery to exertion and hardship, and argued this approach would lead to triumph for both man and nation. Here he is in Cuba during the Spanish-American war, leading volunteer regiment the Rough Riders. Returning a war hero, he re-entered politics and became president after William McKinley’s assassination in 1901. GSHair Like Mine, 2009By Pete SouzaView image in fullscreenThe symbolic power of the first African American president was cemented in this image of Barack Obama leaning forward so a five-year-old boy could feel his hair. On 8 May 2009, Jacob’s dad, departing national security council staffer Carlton Philadelphia, took his family to the Oval Office for a farewell photo. This snap, by the then chief White House photographer Pete Souza, captures the moment Jacob asked, “Is your hair like mine?” Obama suggested he touch it and see. A framed print of the photo was hung in the White House for the rest of his presidency.“The whole thing happened so fast, I literally have this one picture,” Souza recalls. “My composition was not perfect, but I think it adds to the spontaneity of the moment.”Two years ago, Obama called Jacob to congratulate him on his high-school graduation. “Folks who maybe didn’t feel they belonged,” he said of the image, “they’d look at themselves differently – to see a person who looked like them in the Oval Office.”“That was a highlight of my life,” Jacob said. “If I get to see another Black man at the top, I want to follow that lead.” GSAssassination attempt on Donald Trump, 2024By Evan VucciView image in fullscreenThis photograph will be remembered as a pivotal moment in this year’s election. On 13 July, a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler County in Pennsylvania. The former president was only lightly wounded when a bullet grazed his right ear but one crowd member was killed and another two critically injured before the shooter was taken down by a Secret Service sniper. This remarkable image of Trump – his ear and face bloodied, and fist defiantly raised in the air as he is hurried off the stage, an American flag raised behind him – instantly went viral. In an interview soon after, AP photojournalist Evan Vucci recalled his thoughts as he was capturing the scene: “In my head, I just kept saying to myself, slow down, slow down. Compose, compose.” GSAbraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, 1863By Mathew B BradyView image in fullscreenFor almost a century, it was thought that no photographs existed of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg on 19 November, the day he delivered his endlessly quoted address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. That is, until archivist Josephine Cobb undertook some detective work in 1952. Cobb, the first woman to be employed by the National Archives, picked through the work of the 19th-century photographer Mathew Brady, famous for his portraits of the great and good. She came upon a broken glass negative that showed a vast crowd at Gettysburg – she estimated the time to be about noon, a few hours before Lincoln would speak. After repeatedly enlarging, expanding and reprinting the image, she found his unmistakable face in the crowd (bare-headed, left of centre). FBRonald and Nancy Reagan kissing in Vanity Fair, 1985 By Harry Benson View image in fullscreen“There is in the West,” wrote William F Buckley in 1985, “a tradition against chiefs of state engaging in visible, let alone ostentatious, shows of biological informality.” Ronald and Nancy Reagan, both successful actors before going into politics, bucked tradition by using the White House as a setting for their love story. The media was happy to indulge them, with Buckley writing a fawning ode to the couple in Vanity Fair, to accompany a series of images by Harry Benson of them dancing to Sinatra and locking lips.Reagan, a year into his final term, could risk a little biological informality – the images were probably more consequential for Vanity Fair. Benson later said that the loss-making publication was facing closure until this issue. The editor Tina Brown, he said, convinced the owner to “wait until the June 1985 cover of the Reagans appeared. The magazine sold off the stands and the magazine was saved.” FBRichard Nixon with Elvis Presley, 1970By Oliver F AtkinsView image in fullscreenOne December morning in 1970, Elvis showed up at the White House with a handwritten letter for the president. He wanted to give him a gift (a Colt pistol with silver bullets) and discuss becoming a “federal agent at large”: “I have done an in-depth study of drug abuse and communist brainwashing and I am right in the middle of the whole thing where I can do the most good,” he wrote.Nixon gave Presley a federal narcotics badge, but not an official role. The bizarre encounter was captured by White House photographer Oliver F Atkins, but the images weren’t made public until the 1980s, after Nixon’s resignation and Presley’s death. GSJohn F Kennedy: the loneliest job, 1961By George TamesView image in fullscreenA few weeks into his presidency, JFK stood at his desk before meeting the French ambassador, reading an official paper. Photographer George Tames, shadowing him for the New York Times, took this photograph, which became famous for its intimate portrayal of the pressures of holding office.It was later reproduced in the opening title of US political drama The West Wing. FBBill Clinton hugs Monica Lewinsky, 1996By Dirck HalsteadView image in fullscreenIt was a moment captured by chance: a hug between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the crowd at a Democratic fundraiser in Washington in October 1996. But when news of the affair between the president and the former White House intern broke in 1998, photojournalist Dirck Halstead, then senior White House photographer at Time magazine, recognised her face. After searching through his archives, he located this image in a box of transparencies. The photo ran on Time’s cover that August, when Lewinsky agreed to testify before a grand jury investigating Clinton’s denials of the affair.Four months later, Clinton was impeached on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury, but he was eventually acquitted and left office after two terms in 2001 with the highest approval rating of any departing postwar president. Lewinsky, meanwhile, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, “mainly from the ordeal of having been publicly outed and ostracised back then”, the anti-bullying campaigner wrote in Vanity Fair in 2018. “There has been at least one significant reference in the press to that unfortunate spell in our history every day for the past 20 years.” GS‘Dewey defeats Truman’, 1948Photographer unknownView image in fullscreenWith Harry Truman’s popularity waning, a win for his Republican opponent, Thomas E Dewey, in the 1948 election seemed certain. The Chicago Daily Tribune, forced to go to press early due to a printers’ strike, issued 150,000 copies of this 3 November edition – held up by a gleeful Truman en route to Washington – before it became clear its editors had backed the wrong horse. GSDwight D Eisenhower, 1944Photographer unknownView image in fullscreenThis image of General Dwight D Eisenhower addressing paratroopers at Greenham Common airfield on 5 June 1944, the day before they would parachute into France, became one of the most widely circulated of the war, durably linking him with D-day’s success and the eventual American victory. Despite the general’s authoritative pose, the soldier closest to him, Lieutenant Wallace Strobel, recalled a lighter conversation. “He asked my name and which state I was from … He then said, ‘Oh yes, Michigan, great fishing there. Been there several times and like it.’”After the war “Ike”, as he was popularly known, regularly topped polls as America’s most admired man. After years of claiming that it would be inappropriate for a military leader to run for president, he finally went for it in 1952, winning 55% of the popular vote for the Republicans. FBHarry S Truman and Lauren Bacall on the piano, 1945Photographer unknownView image in fullscreenWhile playing piano for photographers during a wartime variety show in 1945, vice-president Truman was joined by 20-year-old Lauren Bacall, with the famous actor perched awkwardly above him. “I was just a kid,” shrugged Bacall years later. “My press agent made me do it.”Truman had only been vice-president for a few weeks, plucked from relative obscurity by Franklin D Roosevelt. This photograph, considered risque at the time, made headlines all around the world and helped to establish his public image – even if they irritated his inner circle, including his wife, Bess. “I don’t think you should play piano in public again,” she said, according to Truman’s grandson. The New York Times recently dubbed it a viral image before its time – it inspired so many other women to climb up on the piano that it eventually broke. FBShirley Chisholm’s presidential bid, 1972By Don Hogan CharlesView image in fullscreenThis is Shirley Chisholm – who four years earlier had become the first Black woman elected to Congress – announcing her presidential bid at the Concord Baptist Church, Brooklyn. She knew that, with its “Unbought and Unbossed” slogan, the campaign was a long shot – she was also the first woman of colour from either major party to run for president. So it was a feat that, despite racism and sexism from her own party as well as the opposition, she made it to the Democratic national convention with the support of 152 delegates – and came fourth. When Kamala Harris launched her first presidential bid in 2020, she paid tribute with campaign colours based on the red and yellow pins Chisholm’s supporters wore. GSGeorge W Bush’s Mission Accomplished moment, 2003By Stephen JaffeView image in fullscreenDan Bartlett, George Bush’s communications director at the time, would later call this photo op “one of the big regrets of my life”. “It did seem premature,” remembers Stephen Jaffe, the press corp photographer covering Bush’s speech on the aircraft carrier that day. “The administration tried to stage everything perfectly – unfortunately it’s not a perfect world.”As the eight-year occupation of Iraq spiralled and weapons of mass destruction failed to appear, the image of Bush in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner, just six weeks into an invasion that would kill more than a quarter of a million Iraqi civilians, became a symbol of hubris.While Bartlett says the banner referred to the mission of the USS Abraham Lincoln, returning from its tour in the Gulf – the ship’s crew requested it, and he “didn’t think twice”– Jaffe is sceptical and thinks the intended meaning was plain to all on the day. “There was a lot of spin afterwards,” he says. “If the mission had been accomplished, they would have taken credit for it.” FBGeorge W Bush learns of 9/11, 2001By Win McNameeView image in fullscreenThis captures the moment on the morning of 11 September 2001 when George Bush, taking part in a reading session at a primary school in Florida, learned that a second plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. (He’d been informed of the first plane, at the time thought to be an accident, before he entered the classroom.) When his chief of staff, Andy Card, whispered in his ear, “America is under attack,” he decided not to interrupt the reading, instead waiting around seven minutes before leaving.It would become one of the most scrutinised events of his presidency. In his scathing 2004 film Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore said, “Not knowing what to do, with no one telling him what to do, and no Secret Service rushing in to take him to safety, Mr Bush just sat there.” But several people there that day have since spoken out in his defence. “It was nice he understood we were young kids and would probably have gone crazy if he had told us what had happened,” former student La’Damien Smith told an interviewer in 2011. GSSituation Room, 2011By Pete SouzaView image in fullscreen“It’s not a picture I have hanging on my wall,” Pete Souza says. “It’s not artistic – the lighting in that room sucked.” On 1 May 2011, the chief White House photographer was called to the situation room, a network of rooms below the White House. The atmosphere immediately felt unusual. “I had been there many, many times before to cover discussions about sensitive policy decisions,” Souza says. On this day, however, the decision had already been made: Souza was there to document Barack Obama and his senior team as they watched the operation to kill or capture Osama bin Laden play out in real time.As everyone packed into a side room to watch a live feed from a drone, Souza squeezed himself in the corner. (Seated, from left to right, is then vice-president Biden, Obama, joint operations command Marshall B Webb, deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough, secretary of state Hillary Clinton and secretary of defense Robert Gates.) While the raid unfolded in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Souza took about 100 images. “It was as tense and anxious a situation as I had ever seen that whole team in,” he recalls. “You could see it on their faces.” He tried to focus on his composition, getting everyone in frame, and on timing his shutter clicks so as not to distract them. Later it was announced that Navy Seals had killed Bin Laden, along with his son, a courier and two of the courier’s relatives.Of nine pictures released that day, it was this one that went viral, exhaustively analysed and relentlessly memed. Souza, looking back today, believes this was because it occupied some part of the national psyche: “We had this guy that attacked our country, and it took us 10 years to find him, but we found him. It closed the chapter.” FBJohn Quincy Adams, 1843By Philip HaasView image in fullscreenThough Adams was not the first president to be photographed (an 1841 picture of William Henry Harrison is now lost), this is the oldest surviving portrait of a US president. Adams had a familiarly vexed relationship with the medium. “All hideous,” he wrote in his diary, after posing for daguerreotypes in the early 1840s. “Too true to the original.” This image of Adams – who served as president in the 1820s – surfaced in 2017, found by the great-great-grandson of a congressman who had received it as a gift from Adams. FBMichael Dukakis and the tank, 1988By Michael E SamojedenView image in fullscreenMeant to project strength, this unfortunate photo-call crystallised, for critics and voters, something mediocre and uncertain about the Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Dukakis. The Republicans used it relentlessly in attack ads.Politicians are drawn to tanks: Churchill, Putin, Blair, Hugo Chavez, Liz Truss and Nigel Farage have all been snapped on or in one. Dukakis’s efforts came only a couple of years after Thatcher’s influential contribution to the genre; while she loomed out of the turret with uncanny poise, dressed in her own clothes, he seemed shrunken and overwhelmed, in a helmet that didn’t belong to him.Widely recognised as one of the most disastrous campaign photos in history, the image would haunt future presidencies. “I sat in countless meetings in which some smartass warned that a stop on the president’s schedule had the makings of a ‘Dukakis in the tank moment,’” recalled former Clinton aide John King to Politico. In 2013, after being handed a naval football helmet, Obama declined to try it on. “You do not put stuff on your head if you’re president,” he joked. FBJFK in the motorcade, 1963Photographer unknownView image in fullscreen“It was a watershed moment that changed America,” says Fredrik Logevall, historian and biographer of John F Kennedy. “I think there’s something to the notion that America lost its innocence after 22 November 1963.”More than other images from Kennedy’s assassination – grainy TV coverage of the immediate aftermath, or Lyndon B Johnson being sworn in – this long lens shot of Kennedy smiling just moments before his assassination has come to signify what was lost that day. “In this photograph he’s for ever frozen in our minds,” Logevall says, “the picture of youthful vitality and glamour.”For Logevall, it captures an era not only less haunted by political violence – open-top motorcades, beloved by Kennedy because he could get “closer to the people”, are a thing of the past – but also less riven by polarisation. “This was a conservative city,” he notes, and yet “hundreds of thousands of people turned up to cheer him on”.Kennedy was on his way to deliver a speech on political extremism, with lines Logevall believes to be prescient. “America’s leadership must be guided by learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain popular ascendancy, with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.” FBLBJ being sworn in, 1963By Cecil W StoughtonView image in fullscreenOn 22 November 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F Kennedy, vice-president Lyndon B Johnson took the oath to become the 36th president of the US, inside a cramped compartment aboard Air Force One, on the runway of Dallas airport. Kennedy’s body had been loaded on to the plane 15 minutes before, and as the compartment filled with people, White House photographer Cecil Stoughton stood on top of a sofa, crammed himself against the curved ceiling and asked everyone to step back.When Jackie Kennedy arrived, still in her blood- stained suit, she was positioned to LBJ’s left – her haunting, dazed expression lends the image its emotional force. In less than a minute, as Stoughton snapped eight pictures, the ceremony was over. As Air Force One continued on to Washington, Stoughton left the plane to ensure his film was swiftly developed and transmitted to the world’s press, to authenticate the transfer of power to a new president. FBDonald Trump mugshot, 2023By Fulton County Sheriff’s OfficeView image in fullscreenEven before Trump arrived at the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in Atlanta, Georgia, last August, people were anticipating the release of his mugshot, with fakes spreading around the internet. It was his fourth arrest that year, but the first time he had had a picture taken.Mugshots are often used to shame public figures who have run-ins with the law. But for Trump, ever the self-publicist, the image became a golden opportunity, adorning mugs, T-shirts and stickers, with the mottos “Never Surrender” or “Not Guilty”. Trump, not long reinstated on X by Elon Musk, tweeted the image himself, raising more than $7m in just a few days. FBJimmy Carter at Camp David, 1978By Karl SchumacherView image in fullscreenIn September 1978, Jimmy Carter convened a secret 12-day summit with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat at Camp David. The main focus was a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel after 30 years of intermittent war. The resulting accords led to Israel agreeing to withdraw from the Sinai in exchange for its first official recognition by an Arab state and an end to the state of war. A plan was also laid out for Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza, but it was never implemented.Here Begin and Sadat are shown smiling and shaking hands at the presidential retreat in Maryland, as Carter looks on. “The picture makes it look as if the three leaders all got along very well at the summit. That was not at all the case,” recalls William B Quandt, a former national security council staffer who was involved in the negotiations. “The adversaries were very hostile, and on the third day Carter decided not to have any more three-way meetings. We were not at all sure we would get an agreement until the last day.”Begin and Sadat won the Nobel Peace prize that year, while Carter was awarded it in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts”. While the Camp David accords are recognised as his greatest presidential achievement, they left crucial issues unresolved and, some argue, helped prevent Palestianian statehood. GSGeorge HW Bush in bed, 1987By David ValdezView image in fullscreenThis photograph, taken in 1987 for Life ­magazine, captured the then vice- president with his ­family on holiday in Maine. David Valdez – personal photographer to Bush at the time – was invited by Barbara Bush to come by the house at 6am. “I poked my head in the bedroom door and there were George and Barbara Bush in bed,” he later told NPR. “Then the ­grandchildren started coming in and I took that snap, and that wound up running two full pages, and it’s taken on a life of its own.” The Washington Post credited the image with launching Bush’s successful campaign for the presidency; Valdez became his official White House ­photographer. FBLyndon B Johnson watches war protests, 1968By Yoichi OkamotoView image in fullscreenThis strikingly intimate shot shows LBJ and his family at his ranch in Texas, watching TV coverage of Vietnam war protests outside the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago. This level of access was remarkable: Yoichi Okamoto was the first civilian to be appointed chief photographer for the White House.Here we can also see a turning point in LBJ’s presidency. Since taking over in 1963, he had sent more than 500,000 troops to what the public increasingly saw as an unjustifiable, unwinnable war. “I know we oughtn’t to be there,” Johnson admitted to a colleague in 1966, “but I can’t get out.” He withdrew from the 1968 election, and Nixon won. GSCalvin Coolidge as a cowboy, 1927Photographer unknownView image in fullscreenDuring his tenure in the 1920s, Calvin Coolidge held the greatest number of press conferences of any president (521 over six years), delivered the first State of the Union address on the radio and was the first to appear in a sound film. The media-savvy president appeared in photos dressed up in workers’ overalls, pitching hay and – as here – wearing a cowboy’s chaps and hat, on a trip to South Dakota. This image caused a stir: while the New York Times claimed “Coolidge as Cowboy Wins West’s Heart”, others called him “a pitiful puppet of publicity”, the first president to make himself a laughing stock. He would not be the last. FBBill Clinton on Arsenio Hall, 1992By Reed SaxonView image in fullscreenThis may well be what clinched the 1992 election for Bill Clinton. In June, weeks before accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, he appeared on Arsenio Hall’s late-night talkshow and played Heartbreak Hotel on the saxophone. It was a bold move at the time and the image of a cool, confident Clinton on stage with his sax and dark shades is credited with helping him secure the youth vote especially. “It’s nice to see a Democrat blow something besides the election,” Hall quipped on the show. The success of the appearance, the Los Angeles Times wrote, “changed presidential politics – turning pop culture’s hippest TV shows into the contemporary equivalent of campaign whistle-stops”. GSLyndon B Johnson with Martin Luther King Jr, 1965Photographer unknown View image in fullscreen“I want to tell you how grateful I am,” Johnson told King on the phone, after becoming president in 1963, “and how worthy I’m going to try to be of all your hopes.” The cautious collaboration between the two reached its peak on 6 August 1965, with the signing of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting. Johnson is pictured that day, reaching out to pass a smiling King the pen used to sign the act, as Rosa Parks looks on.How strong this much mythologised moment of unity really was has remained the subject of fierce debate. Mutual distrust haunted their interactions and King faced relentless pressure from J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, with Johnson’s knowledge. King split with the government over Vietnam, and today, voting rights have been rolled back. FBRonald Reagan at the Berlin Wall, 1987By Dirck HalsteadView image in fullscreenOn 12 June 1987, Ronald Reagan delivered probably the most famous sentence of his presidency: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” He was standing in front of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, 24 years after JFK gave his famous speech in the city. It was a risky move: the previous day, thousands had gathered to protest against his visit. Even his own advisers had been unsure whether the public address to the Soviet leader was too provocative. But the fall of the Wall two years later, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, seemed to vindicate the decision – though there is debate over whether its importance has been overplayed. Over time, Gorbachev and Reagan, both keen to end the cold war, formed a productive alliance. GSJoe Biden at the debate, 2024By Justin SullivanView image in fullscreen“I’ve done 31 debates since I’ve been at Getty,” says photographer Justin Sullivan, “and I’ve never seen anything like that.” The Biden-Trump debate of June 2024 had felt unusual even before it started: press were allowed in only moments before it began and the room was eerily empty. As a “pale and very unstable” Biden gave “incoherent” answers, Sullivan focused on the “strange facial expressions” that damned him as much as his nonsensical responses did. Within weeks, he’d dropped out of the race.“It was a sad ending to a strong presidency that history will look upon more favourably,” says David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief. “He inherited four major crises – the pandemic, the economy, racial justice and climate – and made significant progress on all of them.” FBRobert F Kennedy’s assassination, 1968By Bill EppridgeView image in fullscreenOn 5 June 1968, Robert F Kennedy was in the ballroom of the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles, giving a victory speech after winning the Democratic California presidential primary – he was shaping up to be the nominee to run against Richard Nixon in the general election. As he exited through the hotel kitchen after midnight, shaking hands with staff, shots rang out. In this photograph by Life magazine photographer Bill Eppridge, Kennedy lies on the floor while a busboy, Juan Romero, crouches down to comfort him. Kennedy died the next day. The gunman was Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian-Jordanian man who said he felt betrayed by Kennedy’s support for Israel in the six-day war.Letters addressed to “the busboy” soon arrived at the hotel. “One even went so far as to say that if he hadn’t stopped to shake my hand, the senator would be alive, so I should be ashamed of myself for being so selfish,” Romero told NPR in 2018. “It’s been a long 50 years.” He visited Kennedy’s grave in 2010, buying his first suit for the occasion.Alternative accounts of the assassination have since emerged. His son, Robert F Kennedy Jr – a conspiracy theorist who recently suspended his own presidential campaign – is among those who believe there was a second gunman. GS More

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      Jimmy Carter has voted in presidential election, representatives confirm

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      Jimmy Carter, the centenarian former Democratic president, has voted in the 2024 presidential election, his representatives confirmed on Wednesday.A statement from the Carter Center did not reveal who he voted for, but it is assumed the 100-year-old, who is in hospice care, cast his ballot for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.“He’s never voted Republican in his life,” his son, Chip, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, after revealing in August that Carter’s greatest wish, more than reaching his 100th birthday, was to live long enough to support her.“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” he said at the time.At the Democratic national convention in August, just weeks before Carter’s 1 October birthday, his grandson Jason, the Carter Center chair, told delegates that the former president believed Harris “carries my grandfather’s legacy”.The statement issued on Wednesday at lunchtime was brief: “The Carter Center can confirm that former US President Jimmy Carter voted by mail today, Oct 16, 2024. We do not have any further details to share at this time.”Some media outlets earlier reported falsely that Carter, whose single term of office was 1977 to 1981, had already voted on Tuesday’s first day of early voting in Georgia.

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      The Journal Constitution, confirming the correct details on Wednesday, said Carter filled out his ballot and it was placed in a drop box at the Sumter county courthouse near his hometown of Plains this morning.Carter has been “an especially reliable voter” over the years, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The newspaper said he had routinely cast ballots in general elections as well as primary runoffs and special elections. For more than a decade, he has voted exclusively by mail in elections tracked by the state, it said.According to Jason Carter, his grandfather, the 39th US president, was in August “more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza”. He has been in hospice care since February 2023, nine months before the death of his wife, the former first lady Rosalynn Carter.The move was widely believed to be an indication that Carter was nearing the end of his life, a perception reinforced by his decision to ask Joe Biden to deliver his eulogy the following month.Biden then suggested he might have provided that information unintentionally, telling reporters: “Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that,” before adding Carter’s medical team had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated”.The ultimate elder statesman of US politics, Carter became the first president in history to reach 100 years old, a milestone celebrated a couple of weeks before his birthday at a star-studded party in Atlanta.“Not everyone gets 100 years. But when someone does and uses that time to good, it’s worth celebrating,” Jason Carter, the 2014 Democratic nominee for Georgia governor, said.After losing to the Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election and leaving the White House, Carter dedicated himself to diplomacy, and was regularly provided counsel to subsequent presidents dealing with international crises.He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.He founded the Carter Center in 1982 with the intention it become a leading advocate for advancing human rights globally and alleviating famine, poverty and suffering. More

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      Jimmy Carter becomes the first former US president to turn 100

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      Joe Biden led congratulations on Tuesday to Jimmy Carter on his 100th birthday, a milestone that makes Carter the first former US president to become a centenarian.Carter entered hospice care at his home in Plains, Georgia, 19 months ago. His grandson, Jason Carter, has said the former president is eager to cast his ballot for Kamala Harris, a fellow Democrat, in the presidential election.The White House paid tribute with a display of big lettering declaring “Happy Birthday President Carter” and the number 100 outside the north portico. Carter has asked Biden to eulogise him at his state funeral when the time comes.In a statement Biden, 81, who was the first sitting senator to endorse Carter’s 1976 election campaign, said his predecessor has always been “a moral force for our nation and the world”.He added: “Your hopeful vision of our country, your commitment to a better world, and your unwavering belief in the power of human goodness continues to be a guiding light for all of us.”View image in fullscreenBarack Obama posted a video message on the social media platform X that said: “Happy 100th birthday, President Carter! Thank you for your friendship, your fundamental decency, and your incredible acts of service through the @CarterCenter. Michelle and I are grateful for all you’ve done for this country.”Carter, who has lived longer than any US president in history, served a single term from January 1977 to January 1981 and was beleaguered by high inflation and the Iran hostage crisis. But more recently historians have argued that his record deserves reappraisal and he was ahead of his time in calling for action to tackle the climate crisis.His decades of humanitarian work after leaving office, including the promotion of human rights and alleviating poverty in countries around the world, earned him the Nobel peace prize in 2002.His birthday is being marked by the broadcast of a tribute concert by stars of country, rock and gospel music recorded at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre last month. The concert raised more than $1m towards the international programme of the Carter Center, which he founded with his wife, Rosalynn Carter. The former president plans to tune in to the concert on Georgia Public Broadcasting, according to his grandson Jason Carter.Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were married for 77 years. Rosalynn Carter died in November last year and the former president was last seen in public at his wife’s funeral, where he used a wheelchair and appeared frail. He has been diagnosed with cancer and other health issues, and decided to end medical intervention and enter hospice care in February 2023.Carter is expected to mark his birthday in the same one-storey home that he and Rosalynn built in the early 1960s – before his first election to the Georgia state senate. He taught Sunday school at his hometown Baptist church in Plains until a few years ago.Jason Carter, who is chair of the Carter Center governing board, told the Associated Press: “Not everybody gets 100 years on this earth, and when somebody does, and when they use that time to do so much good for so many people, it’s worth celebrating.“These last few months, 19 months, now that he’s been in hospice, it’s been a chance for our family to reflect and then for the rest of the country and the world to really reflect on him. That’s been a really gratifying time.”Early voting in Georgia begins on 15 October, two weeks into Carter’s 101st year. Jason Carter added: “When we started asking him about his 100th birthday, he said he was excited to vote for Kamala Harris.”The Carters have worked with the non-profit group Habitat for Humanity International since the 1980s, and the ex-president has regularly joined other volunteers to help build homes for people affected by poverty or disasters.This week, to mark Carter’s birthday, scores of Habitat volunteers, including country music stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, will build 30 homes in St Paul, Minnesota.Jonathan Reckford, Habitat’s chief executive officer, said: “The Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project serves not only as a way to honor the Carters’ legacy, but also as a reminder of what is possible when people from all walks come together to work toward one common goal.” More

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      Stars come out in Atlanta to celebrate Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday

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      Former president Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday is on 1 October. His supporters didn’t want to wait that long to throw a party.A parade of Georgia luminaries on Tuesday lit up the venerable Fox Theater on Peachtree Street. In a city that boasts new, swanky modern glass and steel venues like the Cobb Energy performing arts center or the Eastern befitting the city’s rising prominence, organizers chose Atlanta’s oldest concert hall to celebrate Carter’s centennial.Jimmy Carter is four years older than the Fox Theater.“Not everyone gets 100 years,” said Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson and 2014 nominee for governor of Georgia. “But when someone does and uses that time to good, it’s worth celebrating.”View image in fullscreenThe event was almost entirely devoid of maudlin sentiment. Video testimonials by Jon Stewart, Bob Dylan and others, were splashed across a screen, interspersed by images of famous musicians of the period visiting the White House.Every living president except Trump sent a message of congratulations and well-wishing.Headliners included five-time Grammy award winner Angélique Kidjo of Benin, BeBe Winans and Carlene Carter – no relation to the former president.Carter, a Democrat, was president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, and is the longest-lived US president. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel peace prize for what the committee said was “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.“When my mother, June Carter, and her husband, Johnny Cash, went to visit him at the White House, I was pretty jealous, as I thought so highly of him even back then,” said Carlene Carter, 68. “Both he and June had suggested more than once that we were, in fact, kin, and the fact that both he and mom had that Carter ‘sparkle’ makes me think that they were related. When Jimmy Carter was our president, it was evident to me that he only wanted the best for our country and for all humankind. I look at him as a very special, spiritual soul, so when people ask if we’re related, I always respond, ‘I hope so.’”View image in fullscreenIn his video message, Stewart said: “He has these ideals, and he executes them. Personally.“It’s a lesson in living your life with intention.”Dave Matthews in a happy birthday message played on the screen, said: “You were definitely the first rock’n’roll president.”With the choice of The Road Home in the first refrain by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s choral performance, presenters quietly acknowledged the heartbreak usually avoided in polite conversation around here: that the end of Carter’s life is imminent.View image in fullscreenCarter is in hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia, and has been since February 2023, 578 days ago. A National Institutes of Health analysis noted that the average stay in hospice is about 17 days. Carter’s wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, died last year after a few days in hospice.Last month, he told his grandson Jason Carter, “I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala.”“As I’m sure you know, my grandfather wishes he could be here tonight,” Jason Carter said on Tuesday. Georgia Public Broadcasting plans to play the concert on Jimmy Carter’s birthday in a couple of weeks. “I will guarantee to you that he will be in front of the TV, watching,” the younger Carter said.View image in fullscreenMany of the performing artists, including rock group Drive-By Truckers, Allman Brothers member Chuck Leavell, and The B-52s have Georgia ties.The B-52s formed in Athens, Georgia, while Carter was campaigning for president in 1976. He was 52. Vocalist Fred Schneider was 25. The B-52s held their farewell concert last January at the Fox.View image in fullscreenThe event raised money for the Carter Center in Atlanta, which promotes health and advocates for democracy around the world.Most recently, the Carter Center, in conjunction with other advocacy organizations for international democracy, released a set of models for genuine elections – a set of specific steps that government leaders and democracy advocates can take to help strengthen democracy.Jimmy Carter founded the Carter Center 42 years ago. More

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      ‘I’m trying to make it’: Jimmy Carter’s goal is to vote for Kamala Harris

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      Nearing his 100th birthday and in hospice care since February 2023, the former president Jimmy Carter reportedly has one goal: voting for Kamala Harris against Donald Trump.“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” Carter told his son Chip this week, as his grandson Jason Carter recounted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Harris, Carter’s fellow Democrat, will face the Republican Trump for the presidency on 5 November. Carter’s 100th birthday will fall on 1 October.A Democrat who was in the White House from 1977 to 1981, Carter is the oldest living president. In ill health for several years, his family announced that he entered hospice care on 18 February 2023. Many took that announcement to mean Carter was near the end of his life.And the next month, the current president, Joe Biden, said he had been asked to deliver Carter’s eulogy.Biden also said Carter’s doctors had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated because they found a breakthrough”.In October 2023, as the White House celebrated Carter’s 99th birthday, the former Democratic National Committee chairperson Donna Brazile said the former Georgia governor was “a towering, old southern oak … as good as they come and tough as they come”.The following month, Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, died aged 96. The couple, who campaigned for human rights and mental health reform, were married for 77 years, through Jimmy Carter’s time in the US navy, in Georgia state politics, in the White House and in a post-presidency widely regarded as one of the most productive.In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel peace prize, “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.In 2021, he told the Associated Press the secret to a long life was “to marry the right person”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Saturday, the Journal-Constitution said Jason Carter said his grandfather had in recent days been “more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza”, the latter a tricky issue for Harris to navigate, not least as she nears a decision on her vice-presidential pick.Jason Carter said his grandfather a few days ago voiced his wish to vote for Harris, who has served as Biden’s vice-president. Jimmy Carter expressed his support for Harris when Chip Carter asked if he was trying to make it to 100.As the Journal-Constitution noted, early voting in Georgia begins on 15 October – two weeks past the former president’s centenarian birthday. More

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      US presidential debates: the 10 most memorable moments

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump will debate on Thursday for the first time this election cycle, and it holds the potential for some history-making moments.Debates can inform voters on both the issues and temperaments of the candidates, potentially swaying an undecided voter toward one candidate’s direction. They can also make for good TV, creating soundbites that resonate for decades to come.From the candidates’ physical appearances to gaffes to planned attacks to off-the-cuff retorts, here are some memorable moments from US presidential debate history.View image in fullscreen1960: The first and possibly still the most famous televised American presidential debate pitted the telegenic Democrat John F Kennedy against Republican vice-president Richard Nixon, creating defining moments for both presidential debates and television itself. The clammy Nixon was recovering from illness and had a five o’clock shadow but refused makeup. TV viewers are said to have judged Kennedy the winner, whereas radio listeners gave it to Nixon or called it a draw. Kennedy won a narrow election. He was assassinated three years later.View image in fullscreen1976: Republican president Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon after the Watergate scandal, had been closing the gap on Democrat Jimmy Carter but then remarked: “There is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” It was seen as a critical gaffe in the context of the cold war and Carter went on to win the election.View image in fullscreen1980: Carter accused Republican Ronald Reagan of planning to cut Medicare healthcare funding for the elderly. Reagan, who had complained that Carter was misrepresenting his positions on numerous issues, said with a chuckle: “There you go again.” The audience erupted. The duel attracted 80.6 million viewers, the most ever for a presidential debate at that time, according to Nielsen.View image in fullscreen1984: Reagan, at 73 the oldest president in US history at the time, took the sting out of the issue of his age during the second debate with the Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, 56, with this line: “I want you to know that, also, I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan was re-elected.View image in fullscreen1988: Democrat Michael Dukakis, taking on the Republican vice-president George HW Bush, was asked whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. “No, I don’t, Bernard,” the Massachusetts governor replied. “And I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life.” He was criticised as cold and unemotional and lost the election.View image in fullscreen1988: In the vice-presidential debate, Bush’s running mate Dan Quayle compared himself with John F Kennedy. The Democratic senator Lloyd Bentsen shot back: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” It is probably the most famous line ever uttered in a vice-presidential debate and has been much parodied since.View image in fullscreen1992: In a three-way contest with Democrat Bill Clinton and businessman Ross Perot, President George HW Bush made the fatal mistake of looking at his watch. It gave the impression of a haughty, aloof incumbent who did not want to be there and took too much for granted. Bush later admitted what had been on his mind: “Only 10 more minutes of this crap.” He lost to Clinton.View image in fullscreen2000: Democratic vice-president Al Gore went into the debate leading in the polls but sighed loudly when his rival, Republican George W Bush, spoke. In another incident, he was criticised for invading Bush’s personal space when Bush strolled forward and Gore rose and moved towards his rival, as if looking for a fight. Bush dismissed him with a nod and won a close and bitterly disputed election.View image in fullscreen2012: President Barack Obama was widely felt to have “phoned in” his first lackluster debate performance against Republican Mitt Romney, who performed above expectations. But in the second debate, Romney, responding to a question about gender pay equality, said he had “binders full of women” as candidates for cabinet posts. The phrase became a meme on social media and Romney lost in November.US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate
      What to know about the Biden-Trump debate
      Debate could open up the race for the White House
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      RFK Jr fails to qualify for the first debate and blames CNN
      View image in fullscreen2016: With no incumbent in the mix, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton debated like an outsider and a seasoned public servant, respectively. In perhaps the most enduring soundbite, Clinton hit at Trump’s failure to pay income taxes in the few tax returns that were public at the time. “That makes me smart,” Trump retorted. He also called people coming into the US “bad hombres”, botching the pronunciation of the word. And in one eerie moment, Trump stood close behind Clinton as she answered an audience question, which Clinton later wrote made her skin crawl. Trump also refused to say whether he’would accept the results of the election – which he would go on to win in 2016.View image in fullscreen2020: Trump, now the incumbent, debated Joe Biden in his characteristically testy way, replete with interruptions. At one point, an exasperated Biden pleaded, “Will you shut up, man?”. That memorable line came as the debate schedule was affected by a new virus, Covid-19, spreading through the country. Trump tested positive for the virus, leading to the cancellation of the second debate. His former chief of staff claimed Trump tested positive before the first debate but didn’t disclose it, a claim that Trump called “fake news”. Biden went on to win the election.
      An earlier version of this article was published in 2016 More

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      Rosalynn Carter memorial service: Jimmy Carter joins mourners at Atlanta church – as it happened

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      Former president Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn Carter:Carter turned 99 in October, and has been in hospice in his home town of Plains, Georgia, since February.Here’s the moment he arrived at the church for the ceremony:Mourners including Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock paid tribute to former first lady Rosalynn Carter at a ceremony in Atlanta. Back in Washington DC, House Democrats called up a resolution to expel fraudster George Santos from the chamber that must be voted on within two days, while the chamber’s Republican leaders are reportedly considering holding a vote on a separate resolution Thursday.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the memorial service in Atlanta. The 99-year-old former president has been receiving hospice care since February.
      Amy Carter spoke about her parents’ love for each other, and read from a letter her father wrote to Rosalynn while he was serving in the navy.
      Nikki Haley received the endorsement of Koch-affiliated Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action, in a potential boost for her quest to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Santos insists he will not resign, while the House resolution to expel him needs two-thirds majority support to pass.
      Trump and Santos aren’t so different, a biographer of the New York congressman says.
      Back in Congress, Punchbowl News reports that the House’s Republican leadership is considering taking up GOP lawmaker Michael Guest’s resolution to expel George Santos on Thursday:Passing Guest’s resolution would make the separate motion proposed by Democrat Robert Garcia moot. It remains to be seen if either proposal has the two-thirds majority support necessary to pass.Here are a few photos as the tribute to Rosalynn Carter wrapped up in Atlanta:Pallbearers have loaded Rosalynn Carter’s casket into a hearse, which is now departing the tribute ceremony.Her funeral is scheduled for tomorrow in Plains, Georgia, the Carters’s hometown. That ceremony and her burial at the family residence are restricted to family and friends, according to the Carter Center.The tribute to Rosalynn Carter is nearing its conclusion in Atlanta.The closing benediction was given by Tony Lowden, a pastor at the church the Carters attended in Plains, Georgia, who made a point to acknowledge the work of the Secret Service agents who guarded the former president and his family during his time in office, and in the decades since:
      Oftentimes, Mr. President, we don’t acknowledge those who keep us safe. Rosalynn Carter is in heaven, and she did the work of the Lord and the kingdom all around the world. And Don and all the directors for 46 years got her and her family home safe. And I say thank each and every one of you, those that are standing post and those that are listening on the radios right now. Thank you and she loves you and a nothing you can do about it.
      Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s grandson Jason, a former Georgia state senator, spoke about his grandmother’s work fighting Guinea worm disease, as well as advocating for better mental health care.“Her advocacy for mental health was a 50-year climb that is as remarkable as any other and has been mentioned already. But if you imagine just how far our society has come in the last five years on issues of mental health, and you think that she decided in 1970 to tackle the anxious and stigma associated with mental illness, it is remarkable how far she could see and how far she was willing to walk,” Carter said. “And that effort changed lives and it saved lives, including in my own family. She was made for these long journeys.”Jason Carter continued:
      John Lewis once said that in all of his marches, he only really learned one thing: Don’t let them turn you around. That was my grandmother to a tee. One of my last memories of her was in a hospital. We were there for my grandfather, but she had her own physical limitations that made it hard for her to walk. She had to practice. She was ready to go for one of these walks and she picked up this cane and I looked at the cane. She looked at me and she said, ‘you know it’s not a cane … it’s a trekking pole’ She said, ‘the exact same kind that those women use when they go to the South Pole.’
      I watched her walk down that hall with that trekking pole. I followed her and I just pray that we never lose sight of that path.
      Back in Georgia, Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy Carter spoke about the importance of love in their relationship:“My mom spent most of her life in love with my dad,” she said. “Their partnership and love story was a defining feature of her life. Because he is unable to speak to you today, I’m going to share some of his words about loving and missing. This is from a letter he wrote 75 years ago while he was serving in the navy”:
      My darling, every time I have ever been away from you, I had been thrilled when I returned to discover just how wonderful you are. While I’m away I tried to convince myself that you really are not could not be as sweet and beautiful as I remember. But when I see you I fall in love with you all over again. Does that seem strange to you? It doesn’t to me. Goodbye darling. Until tomorrow, Jimmy.
      Two House Democratic lawmakers have moved to force a vote within 48 hours on a resolution to expel Republican congressman and admitted fabulist George Santos from the chamber.California’s Robert Garcia introduced the resolution earlier this year, and together with New York’s Dan Goldman have called it up as a privileged resolution, meaning it must be voted on within the next two days. While it will need a two-thirds majority vote of the chamber to pass, momentum to oust Santos has increased in the past weeks following the release of an ethics committee report that found “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity” by the New York Republican.“The time has finally come to remove George Santos from Congress. If we’re going to restore faith in government, we must start with restoring integrity in the U.S. House of Representatives,” Garcia said in a statement.Added Goldman: “George Santos is an admitted liar, fraud, and cheat, and the recent Ethics Committee report confirms what we’ve long known: George Santos is wholly unfit for public office.”Former president Jimmy Carter was in attendance at the tribute service for his wife, Rosalynn Carter:Carter turned 99 in October, and has been in hospice in his home town of Plains, Georgia, since February.Here’s the moment he arrived at the church for the ceremony:Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s son, James “Chip” Carter is speaking now at his mother’s memorial service.He called Rosalynn the glue that held the family together “through the ups and downs and thicks and thins” of family life and politics.Chip Carter, 73, recalled that when he was 14 he used to get beaten up for wearing a sticker supporting Lyndon Johnson for president.But he said his mother would mend his shirt torn in the fight and replace the sticker for him, as he supported the Democratic Party cause.He also said that Rosalynn Carter “was influential in getting me into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. She saved my life.”He called Jimmy Carter’s loss in the 1980 election to the Republican ticket of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush “devastating to us all.”Chip Carter just mentioned that his mother was “racked with dementia” prior to her death last month.The memorial service for first lady Rosalynn Carter is now under way, with the call to worship and invocation.The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus just gave the patient congregation a stirring rendition of America the Beautiful, as Carter’s casket entered the church.The setting is the Glenn Memorial United Methodist church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.The sunlight is streaming through the windows and illuminating many on the left-hand side of the congregation.The front row in the church is now occupied with the leadership names of the day.Jimmy Carter, 99, has just entered, semi-recumbent on a sort of wheeled chair-bed. He is at one end of the row. Joe Biden is close by with, to the president’s right, Jill Biden, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.The choir is now singing America the Beautiful, as Rosalynn Carter’s casket has been brought in and placed at the front of the church.The hearse has pulled up to the steps of the church and the military guard is marching forward to lift the coffin and take it in to the service.Rosalynn Carter’s flower-decorated coffin is now being carried. The political leaders past and present are now in the church. More details shortly.Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, a Republican, has just entered the church and taken a pew.Georgia’s Democratic US Senators, Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff have also entered and found a seat.We await the biggest names of the day. It’s a brilliantly sunny day with a cloudless, bright blue sky above the church on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta.Things are clearly running a little behind schedule before the start of the memorial service for Rosalynn Carter.It’s due to start at 1pm ET but there are still at least five rows at the front of the church in Atlanta empty and clearly waiting for their VIP occupants.The congregation that’s there so far was just treated to some Elgar from the orchestra and now something of a hush has descended upon the church, apart from a bit of hold music. We await the arrival of the courtege.Guests are filing in to the Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta for the tribute service to former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Her husband Jimmy Carter will attend, as will Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Melania Trump and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. None of the group is scheduled to speak at the event, which will instead feature eulogies from Carter family members and people who knew the former first lady. Back in Washington DC, House Democrats are expected to propose a resolution to expel fraudster George Santos from the chamber that must be brought up for consideration within two days. We’ll be watching for signs of if the resolution has the support to pass.Here’s what else has been happening today:
      Nikki Haley received the endorsement of Koch-affiliated Super Pac Americans for Prosperity Action, in a potential boost for her quest to overtake Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
      Santos insists he will not resign, while the House resolution to expel him needs two-thirds majority support to pass.
      Trump and Santos aren’t so different, a biographer of the New York congressman says.
      Reporters traveling with Joe Biden say the president and first lady have arrived at Glenn Memorial church in Atlanta ahead of the tribute service for Rosalynn Carter.Traveling with them are a number of current and former elected officials, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and Georgia’s two Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Jimmy Carter is also expected to attend, though is not reported to be traveling with the president, as is former first lady Melania Trump.As guests are filing in, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is running through some of Rosalynn Carter’s favorite songs, including compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.In Atlanta, guests are arriving for this afternoon’s tribute service to former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Here are some photos ahead of the event, which begins at 1pm: More