In an era of personalistic politics and saturation media coverage, candidate image is an especially important topic. Presidential contenders go to great lengths to generate particular images of themselves. They devote a substantial portion of their budget to campaign advertising, and use public opinion surveys and focus groups to figure how best to position themselves for electoral advantage.

For these reasons, it is very timely that Kenneth Hacker has assembled a fine group of scholars to investigate how images are formed and what impact they have on voters. Among the contributions of this book are clarification of key concepts linked to image formation, discussion of new methodologies for undertaking image research, and new empirical results based on advances in theory and methodology.

In his introductory chapter, Hacker presents a useful conceptual road map to varying constructs of image. He cites the wide variation in use of this approach, but says that most communications scholars define it as “clusters of voter perceptions of candidates” (p. 4). These images are important for elections because they affect voter assessments of the candidates and the overall dynamics of the election. Susan Hellweg meanwhile distinguishes “unitary” from “nonunitary” models of voter decision making. In the former, voters employ a consistent set of standards to judge all the candidates, while in the latter, citizens use different factors to assess each candidate.

Other chapters focus more on methodology and new approaches to investigating image formation. For example, William Benoit and John McHale apply a computer content analysis to campaign spots and debates that allows them to chart the frequency of appeals to sincerity, morality, empathy, and drive from 1952 to 2000. Morality was the most common appeal in the 1960s and 1970s, but has dropped precipitously since that time. Susan Hellweg and Brian Spitzberg undertake a meta-analysis of presidential candidate images. Lynda Lee Kaid, meanwhile, studies semantic differentials (such as bipolar adjectives) as part of candidate images. There are promising techniques that go beyond standard content analysis or survey approaches to political communications.

The rest of the volume presents new empirical results on topics related to image. Carolyn Funk presents a very engaging case study of the impact of scandal on presidential campaigns. Focusing on Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, she shows that despite all the attention to the negative consequences of scandal for candidate fortunes (especially following the Hart scandal), politicians such as Ronald Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush have shown amazing resilience in the face of investigations into their character. In many cases, there is little evidence that scandal hurts candidates, even though it may damage perceptions of particular character traits. The major exception to this conclusion is for candidates who are not well known. They are the individuals for whom scandals can be most devastating.

Allan Louden and Kristen McCauliff look at a particular type of image formation that they call the “authentic candidate.” These are individuals who come across as “genuine, real, valid, [or] bona fide” (p. 93). While these qualities are hard to define, voters seem to know those traits when they see them. In an era of extensive citizen cynicism, authenticity looms as an important characteristic for successful candidates.

Other scholars focus on ads, debates, and interpersonal communication. For example, Lynda Lee Kaid and Mike Chanslor examine the effects of advertising on candidate images in elections from 1988 to 2000. Using experimental treatments on undergraduates at 19 universities around the country, they find a significant link between ad exposure and candidate image assessments. According to them, “the more optimistic, confident, excited, secure, and patriotic the spots made voters feel, the higher their evaluations of the candidate images” (p. 142).

Walter Zakahi looks at presidential debates and image formation in 1992, 1996, and 2000. Although debates in 1992 and 2000 appeared to affect candidate images, there is not much evidence they did so in 1996 (the year of Clinton's reelection). When they are effective, it typically is due to “defining moments” that crystallize public and media sentiments about the particular candidates.

Timothy Stephen, Terea Harrison, William Husson, and David Albert investigate the effects of interpersonal communications on candidate images. Looking at several presidential elections, they find that patterns of interpersonal communication distinguish between winners and losers. Winners came across as “self-contained, secure, relaxed, and interpersonally functional,” while losers appear “overbearing, tense, contentious, histrionic, and serious” (p. 185).

In his conclusion, Hacker outlines future directions for research in this area. He suggests that there is a need to link image perspectives to broader analysis of cognitive constructs, such as attitudes and schemata. In addition, the manner in which images are affected by the dynamics of electoral competition deserves more scrutiny. And in a topic that sometimes is overlooked, he argues that there needs to be considerably more attention to the ethics of image formation. To what extent are candidates manipulating and deceiving the electorate, or pandering to voters? Hacker argues that scholars should devote far more attention to the ramifications of these strategies of democratic governance.

For scholars interested in image formation, political communications, and voter decision making, Presidential Candidate Images this is an important book. The contributors present careful and thoughtful ideas on the theory and methodology of image formation. They are serious about their craft and creative in how they address controversies in this area. Graduate students, in particular, should pay attention to this volume because the discussions of unmet research provide a valuable source of future research projects in the field of political communications.