"The dominant image of leadership in this country is overwhelmingly male.
For President Bush, choosing New York was a somewhat risky move, even when his connection to Sept. 11 invoked nothing but a strong image of leadership and resolve.
Labour has a mountain to climb to win the next election outright, and is still failing to chalk up big enough leads on image or leadership to make it likely to secure an overall majority, according to polling which will be put to a Labour conference to be addressed this weekend by Ed Miliband.
To further burnish the country's image, the leadership has lobbied intensively to receive in 2009 the rotating chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a democracy and human rights group that, among other duties, monitors elections in the former Soviet sphere.
"I think people are attracted to the organization because of the image of leadership and trust and integrity," says Steven D. Oesterle, a partner and managing director of the firm.
Communicating a positive, evocative image about leadership and power is far more complicated when it comes to women leaders.
And when he isn't destroying things in real time, fresh details of his pre-presidential dealings further undermine his attempts to project an image of leadership.
Much of the damage to America's image, its leadership posture in the world, if not the world economy, is already done.
Once girls reshape their image of leadership, they are then able to integrate this into their own personal sense of identity.
If most of the leaders we have seen are white males who lead with a traditional, masculine style (e.g., decisive and dominant), that becomes our image of leadership.
