With bear hugs, smooches, campaigns getting physical
In 2012, connecting with voters is a new kind of body language.
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama goes airborne in a doozy of a bear hug with a pizza guy in Florida. Joe Biden cozies up with a biker chick in Ohio. Paul Ryan encircles a campaign supporter in North Carolina in a double-armed embrace. Even the more-reserved Mitt Romney seems to be loosening up some with people he meets on the campaign trail.
Kissing babies and slapping backs are so yesterday.
The 2012 candidates are putting their all into the campaign cliché of pressing the flesh.
"America's become more touchy-feely," says Lillian Glass, a body-language expert in Los Angeles. "That's what they want in their candidates, and that's what they're getting."
When Jan Queen, 74, locked on to Biden for a hug and kiss last weekend in Jackson, Ohio, she didn't budge for a minute or so.
It was just another friendly campaign schmooze for Biden, the most natural people person among the four top candidates.
But he raised eyebrows Sunday when he buddied up next to a bandana-and-leather-clad biker at a diner in Seaman, Ohio. In photos of the encounter, it almost looks as if the woman is sitting on Biden's lap, but her chair was just pulled up close to him.
Plenty of people also were taken aback by images of Obama being hoisted well off the floor when Scott Van Duzer enfolded him last Sunday in a chest-to-chest bear hug.
Obama had stopped in at Van Duzer's pizza place in Fort Pierce, Fla., during a weekend bus trip across the state, and spoke admiringly of the owner's big "guns." It was a reference to the impressive arm muscles on the 6-foot-3 restaurateur, who decided to demonstrate what he - or they - could do by powerlifting the president.
Van Duzer, a Republican, said he voted for Obama in 2008 and will again, adding, "I do feel extremely comfortable with him."
And that's what all this touching and feeling is about - making voters comfortable with the candidates.
Politicians have always tried to connect with voters. Kissing babies has long been a requirement. People like to see passion in their candidates.
Al Gore's long smooch with wife Tipper after his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2000 caused some people to look at him in a new light.
Romney, for his part, on his convention stage, gave a more standard bye-honey-see-you-tonight kiss on his wife's lips.
Romney's running mate is a more physical campaigner.
When Ryan is announced to a crowd, he often shakes hands and gives high-fives and quick hugs to folks who press up against the waist-high metal barriers that hold back the audience. After events, he lingers, posing for pictures, hugging anyone who wants his embrace, often using both hands to touch the crowd.
Secret Service spokesman Ed Donavan said that when candidates are out in public, agents "are constantly making assessments on the appropriateness of the behavior of the people" around them. He added that in the case of Van Duzer's powerlift of the president, the agents "felt that the behavior was appropriate and was consistent with the event."
