Nonverbal expert explains Bush”s jolly demeanor

The hand-holding I can live with. It was the sheer ebullience on the president’s face that freaked me out.

Much has been made of the images from George Bush’s meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, last week. Most of the attention centered on their hand-in-hand stroll through the Texas bluebonnets. Comedians viewed it through the lens of American cultural homophobia. Jay Leno’s punchline: “What happens in Crawford, stays in Crawford.”

But that part didn’t particularly trouble me.

Instead it was the big Texas grin on the president’s face that I found riveting. He was walking with the royal leader of the country that produced 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, a country that prefers an absolute monarchy to democracy and a country known for its human rights violations. Last month, Saudi Arabia’s senior cleric finally announced a ban on forced marriage, but women there remain unable to drive or vote.

And this is the world leader that our president saves his jolliest body language for?

I couldn’t quite leave it alone.

So I called David Givens, Spokane’s own expert on such matters. He’s an anthropologist and the director of the Center for Non-Verbal Studies which he runs from his South Hill home.

Predictably, he focused on different aspects of the ranch scene than I did. He watched it again on CBS at midweek, and noticed the president took the lead, guiding the prince’s elbow and reaching down to grasp his hand. The president extended his hand palm down, which made the gesture friendly but dominant.

Givens watches Bush frequently. He observes that the president often gestures with his hands out flat and his palms down. It’s the hand motion Bush uses when he’s trying to ram an idea like Social Security reform or the war against Iraq down Americans’ throats.

Givens likens it to using a judge’s gavel, or to Khrushchev pounding his shoe on a table.

He observed Bush leading with his shoulders back, strutting a bit, in a parental role Americans frequently assume with people from sharply different cultures. We tend to treat them like children.

“It’s the arrogance of the American culture that our way is right,” Givens says. “Anthropologists have known this a long time.”

As for the hand-holding, that’s a culturally appropriate gesture of friendship in the Arab world. Givens sees it as a positive sign that the president feels comfortable honoring another country’s customs. “I think that’s how we have to communicate with other cultures,” he says.

Chimps walk hand-in-hand, too, when they’re feeling friendly. “It’s a primate thing,” he says.

But what about the overall exuberance in the president’s demeanor? Why did he appear as if he were Clara greeting Uncle Drosselmeyer, who has arrived bearing sweetmeats and a magical nutcracker on Christmas Eve?

Well, first of all, the president wants the prince’s oil, Givens reminds me. And sure enough, just after the prince’s visit, the price of crude dropped. That’s probably enough to make an American president grin.

And besides, the prince and the president both come from oil families. There’s a certain coziness among the world’s oil buddies. Maybe it’s partly a Texas thing. It certainly fueled Michael Moore’s conspiracy theories in the film “Fahrenheit 911.” Moore pieced together an entire segment focusing on the body language between the Bushes and the Arab oil leaders to the tune of REM’s “Shiny Happy People.”

Moore’s work simultaneously fascinated and repelled me. It certainly wasn’t journalism, and I didn’t trust all his conclusions.

But I do wish the president would save the cuddly body language for leaders of countries that traditionally have been our friends. Hand-holding and face-kissing with say, the Canadians, makes some sense. Aside from recent body language that I’d translate as “politely appalled,” they’ve certainly done their best to get along.

I had one last question for the nonverbal expert. What about the scene inside the ranch house when we see Abdullah and Bush sitting together? Bush reclines far back in his chair, with his legs wide apart and an adoring grin on his face. He reminds me of a hound dog rolling over on the floor for his belly to be scratched.

That’s no Texas hound, Givens says. That’s the John Wayne “broadside” stance of relaxed dominance.

Well, all right, then. The leader of the free world, translated.