Sunday, August 27, 2023

Easy Sunday: A flash of body language

It looked bad for Ron DeSantis.


It looked timid. Like he wanted the assurance of others.  

At the Wednesday debate Fox host Bret Baier asked a direct question:
"If former president Trump is convicted in a court of law would you still support him as your party's choice. Please raise your hand if you would."

The eight candidates looked like this as the question was asked. The candidates were facing the hosts.



What happened next took place in two seconds. Vivek Ramaswamy immediately raised his hand and held it over his head. Ron DeSantis turned his head to his right -- our left. We saw him looking at Pence, Christie, and Hutchinson. They had not yet raised their hands. Pence later would.



Then DeSantis turned to his left and saw Ramaswami, Haley, Scott, and Burgum. Their hands were up.



We saw DeSantis jerk his hand up. It looked like he was seeking the safety of a crowd, found it, and only then raised his hand. 



It is an uncharitable view, but that is what it looked like to me. It is certainly how the Trump campaign saw it. They tweeted this:




DeSantis' side-to-side glance provides a body language insight into DeSantis' character: He is inauthentic. This is jumping to conclusions on my part, but our impressions on the unguarded actions of others is a big part of how we frame our opinions. I have been writing about the body language of politics in this blog for eight years. It is why my seeing events live and up close is so useful. I can observe what the candidate is doing before and after the camera is on and their performance is underway.  We understand that people attempt to construct a useful presentation of themselves. It is conscious and therefore artificial. But sometimes our bodies betray us. While DeSantis' mind was racing and deciding how to sound like a decisive leader, his body was revealing an inner truth. At least, that is what it looks like.

A Politico article makes this point, too. It shows live video of the moment. 




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5 comments:

Mike Steely said...

Of course, DeSantis is an opportunist. Why else would someone intelligent enough to graduate from Yale and Harvard Law School be basing his campaign for president on the far-White’s aversion to Black history and affirmative action.

Rick Millward said...

Ron De Santis. Interesting guy. He tried to position himself to the right of Trump, but got shoved aside by Ramaswamy, so now he's Nowhere Man. At this point it's likely dawned on him that he's not going to be the nominee, so what now? Keep campaigning? That's gotta be torture.

The only thing that was highlighted by the "debate" was a party utterly devoid of principle and a lineup of self-serving opportunists trying to discredit each other.

Ed Cooper said...

The most interesting I noticed was the way the other mopes pretended DeSepsis wasn't even present.

Michael Trigoboff said...

DeSantis is a classic illustration of the Silicon Valley meta-story about the dog food company that creates what they think is the perfect dog food, markets it with an amazing ad campaign, and watches the sales rise meteorically for the first two weeks and then tank.

Turns out the dogs didn’t like it…

Mike said...

Good analogy. The dogs prefer rolling around in the stuff Trump feeds them.