Mitt Romney is a good politician, but he has proven time and again that he has no idea how to use the media to his advantage. Ever since Richard Nixon refused to be made-up for television in 1960 and introduced himself to America as a shifty, sweaty, Droopy Dog lookalike, a high premium has been placed on media savvy.

BuzzFeed’s Zeke Miller took this photo of a Romney campaign event in Cleveland today.

Inspiring. Contrast that to a picture of Barack Obama’s campaign rally in Columbus on Saturday, taken by Jed Lewison of Daily Kos.

Apples to oranges, right? Romney can’t be expected to keep up with the President of the United States! Well here’s a photo of an Obama event in Portland almost exactly four years ago.

Yeah.

Obviously 2012 is a much different, much more depressing race than 2008, but campaign ‘optics’ are still a candidate’s best way of convincing the general public of their popularity. Remember the now infamous set of photos of Mitt Romney speaking to an empty Ford Field in Detroit? These images are huge liabilities for a candidate who is fighting to prove that people actually like him.

Campaign events are photo-ops, and a photo-op should seek to captivate people and, generally, should not involve dingy rooms full of old people and empty football stadiums.