That poster is based on a famous superman comic cover by Jim Lee. Thing is - its not really famous with me. I do enjoy the one and the other batman comic and watchmen, but usually thats not a genre i gravitate to. I wanted the senator look ridiculously muscly and heroic and the campaign team would undoubtedly have made a thinly veiled stolen collage. Like candidates using heroic music they dont have the rights to.
Sadly this was written before the whole 2016 presidential election in the us. at that time i was fully convinced that scathing press was the downfall of a politician. it still is - if that politician runs with honesty and heroism and anti crime. the 2016 winner didnt exactly run on honesty and trust... well. sure. trust. trust me. i do the right. you do the right alright.
But oh boy. how naive was i that i thought terrible press would have power over anything...
in the original script they did debate discrediting the times. the lady held against there simply being too many good reporters and that the times reputation was without fail. to let the times look bad, that would have to have been a long standing effort. syphoning in bad stories so that if needed, they could point at those stories and claim: seeeeeee. they suck!