For President Under Duress, Body Language
Speaks Volumes
The Washington Post
By Dana Milbank
October 12, 2005; Page A07
It's only 6:17 a.m. Central time, and President Bush is already facing his
second question of the day about Karl Rove's legal troubles.
"Does it worry you," NBC's Matt Lauer is asking him at a construction-site
interview in Louisiana, that prosecutors "seem to have such an interest in Mr.
Rove?"
Bush blinks twice. He touches his tongue to his lips. He blinks twice more.
He starts to answer, but he stops himself.
"I'm not going to talk about the case," Bush finally says after a
three-second pause that, in television time, feels like a commercial break.
Only the president's closest friends and family know (if anybody does) what
he's really thinking these days, during Katrina woes, Iraq violence,
conservative anger over Harriet Miers, and legal trouble for Bush's top
political aide and two congressional GOP leaders. Bush has not been viewed up
close; as he took his eighth post-Katrina trip to the Gulf Coast yesterday, the
press corps has accompanied him only once, because the White House says
logistics won't permit it. Even the interview on the "Today" show was labeled
"closed press."
But this much could be seen watching the tape of NBC's broadcast during
Bush's 14-minute pre-sunrise interview, in which he stood unprotected by the
usual lectern. The president was a blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and
shifts. Bush has always been an active man, but standing with Lauer and the
serene, steady first lady, he had the body language of a man wishing urgently
to be elsewhere.
The fidgeting clearly corresponded to the questioning. When Lauer asked if
Bush, after a slow response to Katrina, was "trying to get a second chance to
make a good first impression," Bush blinked 24 times in his answer. When asked
why Gulf Coast residents would have to pay back funds but Iraqis would not,
Bush blinked 23 times and hitched his trousers up by the belt.
When the questioning turned to Miers, Bush blinked 37 times in a single
answer -- along with a lick of the lips, three weight shifts and some serious
foot jiggling. Laura Bush, by contrast, delivered only three blinks and stood
still through her entire answer about encouraging volunteerism.
Perhaps the set itself made Bush uncomfortable. He and his wife stood in
casual attire, wearing tool belts, in front of a wall frame and some Habitat
for Humanity volunteers in hard hats. ABC News noted cheekily of its rival
network's exclusive: "He did allow himself to be shown hammering purposefully,
with a jejune combination of cowboy swagger and yuppie self-consciousness."
Perhaps, too, the president's body language said nothing about his true
state of mind. But the White House gave little other information that might
shed light on this. A White House spokesman, Trent Duffy, entered the press
cabin on Air Force One to brief reporters at 1:58 p.m. He left two minutes
later, after answering the only question by saying, "We don't have anything to
announce."
The one newspaper reporter allowed to travel with Bush as part of the White
House's "pool" system reported back to her colleagues after the "Today" event:
"we were at a distance and could not hear what was being said (a theme of the
day)." Other than the "Today" appearance, Bush delivered a one-minute talk to
military recovery workers ("I'm incredibly proud of the job you have done") and
a two-minute statement outside a school ("out of the rubble here on the Gulf
Coast of Mississippi is a rebuilding").
Certainly, Bush retained many of the gestures that work well for him: the
purposeful but restrained hand gestures, the head-tilted smile of amusement and
the easy laugh. But he seemed to lose control of the timing. He smiled after
observing that Iraqis are "paying a serious price" because of terrorism.
As Lauer went through his introduction, the presidential eyes zoomed left,
then right, then left and right again, then center, down and up at the
interviewer. The presidential fidgeting spiked when Lauer mentioned the
Democratic accusation that Bush was performing a "photo op." Bush pushed out
his lower front lip, then licked the right corner of his mouth. Lauer's query
about whether conservatives "are feeling let down by you" appeared to provoke
furious jiggling of the right leg.
Bush joked about his state of mind when Lauer asked Laura Bush about the
strain on her husband. "He can barely stand!" the president said, interrupting.
"He's about to drop on the spot." But the first lady had a calming influence on
the presidential wiggles. When Laura Bush spoke about her husband's "broad
shoulders," the president put his arm around her -- and the swaying and
shifting subsided.
The president, now on more comfortable terrain, delivered a brief homily
about "the decency of others" and "how blessed we are to be an American."
Through the entire passage, he blinked only 12 times.
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