His tongue is sticking out. He is doubled over like the hunchback of Notre Dame. And, from the photographer's angle, John McCain appears to be reaching for his opponent's Democratic ass. The picture, taken at the end of last week's final presidential debate, records a moment of confusion after McCain was told to head off the stage in a different direction. But the camera is a cruel witness, and it really does look as if the Republican is intent on the Obama rear end. After a serious debate, this hilarious image may easily end up the only moment anyone outside a small elite will remember.
© APMcCain reacts as Democratic candidate Barack Obama speaks during the presidential debate on Wednesday. He then headed the wrong way off stage
McCain is far from the first politician to let his guard down - and the tongue that US satirist Stephen Colbert said was making a play for "reptile demographic" could cost him. "If you ever stop thinking about how you look, you can get caught out," says PR guru Mark Borkowski. Consider David Miliband, who went from legitimate candidate for the leadership of the Labour party to presumptuous, banana-wielding git in a single snap.
OK, no one gives you or me a hard time if we wave a banana like a bit of a wally. The problem for Miliband is that many people had a suspicion that he was a presumptuous git, banana-wielding or not. That image - alongside a shot of him, shaking hands with the PM and looking like a cocky schoolboy who's stuck a "kick me" sign on the head's back - became shorthand for a political narrative that was building up. That's why George Osborne did not smile in his speech to the Conservative conference last month: it was more important to avoid a picture of a smug Tory next to headlines about economic catastrophe than to acknowledge the faithful.
McCain's problem is much the same. If everyone thinks you're a bit old, and a bit weird, it's best not to do what makes you look rickety, undignified and mad as a sack of badgers. If Obama had done the same thing, it would probably have been seen as another example of his laid-back charm.
When William Hague wore that infamous baseball cap emblazoned with his name, the problem wasn't the cap. "That image of Hague fitted so well with the sense of him that people already had," says Darren Lilleker of Bournemouth media school. "It reminded us of him as a young boy at party conference and with Margaret Thatcher looking down at him."
Almost every memorable image of politicians making fools of themselves is born of the same dynamic. Consider flip-flopping elitist John Kerry, videoed windsurfing in a clip that made one of the most devastating ads of the 2004 election; think of Bob Dole, as fragile-seeming as fellow Republican contender McCain, who never shook off his pratfall - tumbling over a balustrade. And who could forget Neil Kinnock's disastrous wet bottom when a jog down Brighton beach ended in a collapse that seemed to prefigure his defeat in the polls?
When the image doesn't fit quite so tidily, you might get away with it. That's why a video of Obama's ten-pin bowling effort hasn't really stuck to him - yet. If he loses this election, it will be remembered as the symbol of everything the out-of-touch elitist did wrong. And if John McCain doesn't make it to the White House, this will be the image that people remember him by: a frail old geezer staring fiercely at the backside of the man striding confidently away from him, making a last, desperate play for the vote of the lizards.
...is that McCain's puppeteer inadvertently let the strings slip for a second.
I'm not joking.