Body Politics: What McCain's Smirks, Tics And Jaw-Clenches Really Mean
How John McCain Can Help You Have A Better Relationship
Understanding the language your body speaks can help you attain much deeper intimacy in relationships. One of the big complaints we hear from partners in relationship therapy is, "I can't figure out what he/she's really feeling." A related complaint is, "I don't know how to figure out what I'm feeling." Knowing what you're feeling and what your partner is feeling is essential to a healthy relationship. When people can't, won't or don't know how to speak about their feelings openly, their bodies are left to communicate about those feelings in the form of blinks, twitches, clenches and other bits of Body-Talk. Electing a president is like signing up for a four-year marriage, a marriage in which about half of us will end up being married to someone we wouldn't even want to share a cab with. In this political season, it behooves us all to get better at Body-Talk, so we can understand what those blinks, smirks and clenches are really trying to tell us.
Body-Smart Or Body-Dumb
The morning after the first debate we saw something odd. Several pundits made mention of the remarkable display of twitches, smirks and jaw-clenches that flickered across the face of John McCain throughout the debate. Others mentioned his lack of eye contact, particularly his unwillingness to look Obama in the eye. We were pleased that the commentators observed those things -- many people overlook these important but subtle communications, in the spirit of "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." But here's the odd part: some of the pundits seemed to be apologizing for having noticed McCain's pyrotechnic display of facial flare-ups.
On MSNBC, Mika Brzezinski apologized for possibly sounding "superficial," then went on to discuss McCain tics and smirks. Why did she and others feel like they had to apologize for noticing something that all of us should be paying a great deal of attention to? It's probably because we're taught, as part of our social training, to overlook the language of the body. We are trained to think of it as superficial or not to notice it at all. That training makes us body-dumb instead of body-smart, and it costs us mightily in terms of health and love. If we don't know how to listen to and understand our body's organic language, we can't articulate our feelings in relationships and we can't understand the emotional underpinnings of many diseases.
Any good therapist learns to read the language of the body, but you don't need an advanced degree to understand John McCain's. His patterns are about as subtle as the flashing lights on a sign that says "Danger Ahead." Since we may end up married to him for four years, we need to pay particularly close attention to two patterns of his: smirking and jaw-clenching.
The McCain Smirk:
The Mouth Of Contempt
You probably noticed how often McCain smirked, particularly when he was being forced to listen to Obama speak. It's his expression of contempt. If he were speaking the truth behind his smirk, he'd be saying something like "I hold you in utter contempt. I am superior to you. My disdain for you is boundless." Any seasoned relationship coach knows a lot about contempt, because it's one of the most destructive patterns in relationships. One of our colleagues in the relationship counseling field, John Gottman, calls contempt one of the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, behaviors that signal doom for a relationship (along with criticism, defensiveness and sulking.) Beware of electing a president who wears the Mouth of Contempt. If McCain is elected president, we'll see a lot of it, because he particularly seems to wear it when someone he disagrees with is speaking.
The McCain Jaw-Clench:
The Painful Art Of Biting Back Anger
Out of politeness one is tempted to look away from McCain's jaws, because his left jaw has a permanent bulge from his bouts with cancer. We encourage you, though, to turn your attention to his right jaw; it's a symphony of clenches that played practically non-stop every time he was forced to listen to Obama in the first debate. Since McCain won't release all his medical records, we don't know the story behind the cancer in his left jaw. However, we know a great deal about what causes his right jaw to clench repeatedly. People clench their jaws when they're angry and can't, won't or don't know how to say it plainly. If his jaw-clench could speak, it would be saying: "I'm mad as hell and trying desperately not to show it." The anger shows in 3-D, though, thanks to the eloquence of Body-Talk. That's a good thing. We need to know when people are trying to conceal their feelings, in our relationships at home and in politics. We need to know what's going on behind the denials and delusions of Mouth-Talk.
Mouth-Talk Vs. Body-Talk
Body-Talk always tells you the truth about what's going on. If your mind thinks you're not scared, but you feel speedy-queasy butterfly sensations in your belly, believe your body. If your mate says he or she isn't mad, but you see him or her clenching those jaws repeatedly, believe the Body-Talk not the Mouth-Talk. Mouth-Talk is useful and often entertaining, but you've probably noticed that we humans can speak a lot of twisted stories, wild justifications and outright lies out of our mouths.
What will be very interesting in future debates is watching how John McCain tries to conceal the Body-Talk that was so obvious in the first debate. He's getting media-coaching around the clock, and will likely try to hide his contempt and anger from us next time. It probably won't work, because the twitches and clenches he'd be trying to hide are caused by trying to hide feelings in the first place. John McCain has been widely reported to have a volcanic temper. A ten-year-old, walking into the room and seeing him on television said, "That guy looks like he's about to blow." Frankly, we'd rather see him go ahead and blow his stack, rather than hide his anger and contempt under more and more layers of deception. We've seen enough of that already.
Follow Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GayHendricks
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I teach communication on the college level, and I have to disagree with you that we are socialized to overlook the language of the body. Some experts estimate that as much as 93% of the message is conveyed nonverbally. Emotions are expressed almost entirely nonverbally. When we have all of the nonverbal cues in front of us, it's impossible not to pick up on them even though we might not be aware we are doing so. Certainly some people (and not just therapists) are more astute at reading them, but we are all reading and processing them all the time.
Thank you. I'm so glad to know someone else felt this way while reading the article.
I think the socialization is to ignore twitches that appear involuntary as with the elderly. That may be what the reporter was trying not to be superficial about...
Today Electoral count:
Fivethirty
Obama: 333
mc-204
Realclearpolitics:
Obama: 353
Mc: 185
Electoral-
Obama: 338
Mc: 185
It's going to be a landslide Sarah!
""HHHEHHH ?!?!""
No one needed to school me on body language. I can tell this guys is gonna blow anytime now. Read the story in Rolling Stone. The guy is a roman candle ready to fly.
No, there's probably a bunch of point & shoot games on his aides' laptops for him to utilize when the pressure reaches boiling point. They're probably specially geared for him, full of liberal imagery, not to mention a special one that looks like a certain female governor when she publicly contradicts him.
This was something that was pointed out in another HuffPost comment, and I've done a brief google search to see if it's true. While the samples are small, I do think it holds up the commenter's charge: Namely, that when McCain holds a baby the kid is often screaming or crying, and that when Obama holds a baby the child is calm and happy.
That held true in all the Obama baby-holding pictures I've been able to find in a short search. The babies were calm, maybe a little confused about the stranger, and there was an adorable picture where the candidate and the baby were smiling together. In contrast, the one McCain baby-holding picture I managed to scare up had the poor child screaming its head off.
This is interesting to be because we know children are extremely sensitive to emotions. That goes to reinforce what we know of Obama's calm and serene temperament, and also about McCain's aggressiveness and anger. From the mouths of babes, indeed.
Umm, interesting to 'me,' not to 'be.' My fingers seem to have a cold. :)
Another HuffPo blogger suggested watching the debate with the sound turned off.
Interesting idea.
90% of communication is nonverbal.
How do we want our president to look when he(or, sometime, she) interracts with other heads of state?
I McCain's primary nonverbal message is one of being angry. His frowns, as he hears something he doesn't want to hear, seem genuine to me. His smiles and laughs are very strange. They seem controlled and forced. When he does that I don't have any feeling of wanting to laugh along with him. The smile often seems to come out when he thinks he is being insulted in some way (and he seems very thin skinned), so it just doesn't jibe with what is going on. I get the sense that he is trying to control his nonverbal communication, but the passions below the surface are not controllable for him, and his grimacing comes off as strange and disconnected. Four years of watching his face contort is a scary thought!
(continued from previous post)
There are also examples of other cultures where gestures deemed completely innocuous in the west can cause profound offense (patting a child on the head or pointing your feet at someone in Thailand, blowing your nose in public in Japan) or sometimes mean the opposite of what we're used to (the Japanese hand gesture for "come here" looks like an American brush-off).
In the case of McCain, I think your analysis of his tics is overdetailed and possibly off the mark. I'm not convinced that he feels contempt for Obama -- that's not the McCain we've seen in the past.
What I do believe is that he is a man in internal conflict. He's running a campaign that has sunk to depths that go against all the honourable principles he's espoused in the past, and I think he feels dirty. He didn't want Palin as his running mate, but chose her for political reasons because he couldn't get who he wanted (Lieberman). He's probably thinking that the end justifies the means, but I can't imagine he's happy about the situation ... And the jaw clench may not be biting back anger, but a reflection of the supreme effort it takes for a man who built his career on a reputation for straight talk to stick to a script he doesn't truly believe in.
I listened to the Obama/ McCain debate on the radio so I missed the body language. However, McCain's contempt for Obama came through loud and clear by his repeating the comment that Obama was naive, in the most sniveling voice. I'm not surprised that the Hendricks' noticed the coressponding facial expression.
I am sceptical of these types of analyses -- partly because I happen to have a few tics of my own that are regularly misinterpreted.
a) I usually smile tight-lipped, which is often interpreted in America as the smile of a person with something to hide. I was brought up in England, in a Polish emigre family, and my mother taught me to be suspicious of toothy smiles. They were ostentatious, showy, fake, coached and not to be trusted. The toothy smile, she taught us, was the smile of people trying too hard to be friendly, and therefore probably trying to sell you something.
b) Sometimes when I'm listening to someone speak and they say something that really interests me and gets my brain buzzing, I cross my arms and bring one of my hands to my chin and mouth. It's just my active listening position. But to some American eyes it seems defensive and sceptical. It isn't.
c) A while ago in Europe I dated an American girl, who used to keep nudging me to make more eye contact with her when we were lost in deep conversation. Nobody had ever said this to me before and I was surprised. The reason I wasn't keeping constant eye contact with her when I was speaking was because I was forming my thoughts and, to be honest, I had trouble keeping a clear head when I looked into her very beautiful eyes.
(continued in next post)
Doc, I studied with an expert in non-verbal communication and he always told us to keep in mind the background of the person we're looking at. Gestures that look really weird to us are second nature in other cultures. I understand how you feel about assumptions about your meaning. R. D. Laing wrote that there are three levels in a communication: what is said, what is meant and who is saying it. If we focus only on one, we miss everything truly meaningful.
Or possibly the analysis of your tics have been intrepreted correctly and it is you who are not in touch with what your body and feelings are truly saying.
This is an interesting comment and I agree that special circumstances can influence body language. I can see how your early upbringing would influence your smile, for example. And I dislike pat formulas for behaviors, such as "a tight jaw always means.... " However, in this case I think the Hendricks' analysis of McCain's personality through his body language seems very correct. It fits with his overall behavior patterns.
I found one of McCain's attacks at Obama's response to the Russian/Osstia issue was rather funny in an odd way. McCain with all the contempt he could muster said that Obama's response was "I hope that both sides will show moderation in their actions"..
Obama should be as mad and crazy as you when a situation like this arises? I think not. The President of the United States must speak with moderation in difficult situations. And ACT FORCEFULY IF NEEDED. McCain's temperment and anger has been a trait that his own party and his collegues in the GOP find very disturbing. They have said as much.
The contempt and disgust that he shows for Obama is truly relevatory of his real mental state and his attitudes. Not worthy of the highest office of this country. Neither is his running mate. HIs choice of her shows utter CONTEMPT (there that word comes up again) for the political process and Democratic party and all in it, and that includes millions of Americans as well.
McCain has a history of snubbing those who disagree with him. He refuses to shake hands with reporters who have written negative articles about him, has nearly had fights with other politicians and recently refused to answer a reporters question about whether he would invite the president of Spain to the WH. Why would he snub Zapatero? The only reason I could think of is because he opposed Spain's involvement in Iraq and withdrew their troops once elected.
McCain would be a disaster as top diplomatic representative for our country. His behavior backs up his body language. He is an angry, combative man with grudges against a lot of others.
Great piece and thank you so much. It's highly relevant both to validate the important signals we receive from reading body language -- and to grock that when voting for Presidential and VP candidates, we as voters do in effect choose marry-- or make a contract-- with that person or team.
Just as you would for any relationship or business dealing, you must assess just how credible the person is. It's not about "flip flops" per se, it's about whether the person/people are whom they present to be, and mean what they say. All of us are vulnerable to being seduced, which why it's vital to take a real look before leaping.
McCain has nowhere to go now but down. He can run away from President Bush, but he can't run away from the Republican Party. The Republicans will be regarded from now on as "the party that wrecked America." Over the weeks ahead, as carnage in the economy and the financial markets ramps up, it will become increasingly clear. It is important that this meme be spread through the internet. I urge all commentators to adopt and spread the idea that the Republicans are "the party that wrecked America." It will work because it is the truth. Use it freely. Just spread the word.
What does "grock" mean?
"grok" is a term from Robert Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land". It means to understand very well.
"Grok" (not "Grock") means to understand especially profoundly and intuitively. Robert Heinlein coined it in his novel, _Stranger in a Strange Land_.
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