Watch carefully tonight, for those moments when George W. Bush winks at you.
The president won't give you a full wink, of course - not the demonstrative and overt kind. What he instead executes is a more refined, more subtle variant I call "The Wink."
The Wink occurs when the president furrows slightly his bushy right eyebrow - slightly, yes, but perceptibly. So far as I can tell, he only does it with his right eye, although sometimes his left eyebrow will rise at the same time the right one Winks. My sense is that The Wink is more common during interviews and debates, when Bush is communicating extemporaneously and thus without the aid of teleprompters or notes.
Refining non-verbal cues is a common human phenomenon. Remember that old cartoon with the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys -- each one covering, respectively, his ears, eyes, or mouth? Well, not unlike apes, young children unpracticed in the accepted forms of non-verbal adult communication reveal our species' simian roots: They cover their ears reflexively when an adult blurts a dirty word, or cover their mouths when they accidentally let slip a secret or blurt a dirty word themselves.
As long-term descendants of apes (closer to us in cladograms than monkeys), and matured versions of our childhood selves, we adult humans simply refine these crude, reflexive behaviors. During my sophomore year in college, I remember reading social-psychological experiments that examined non-verbal cues and lying. When people know they are being lied to, for example, they sometimes scratch the side of their necks or even touch their ears lightly. And when experimenters force subjects to tell lies, they often touch around their mouths and chins when speaking. These are variants of the hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil pantomime; they are vestiges of our apish and childlike inner selves. (N.B.: Here is a good online article summarizing the literature on non-verbal cues and lying.)
Of course, skilled politicians are better than the rest of us at suppressing their non-verbal ticks when lying. Whether denying involvement in a scandal, or pretending at a campaign event that the person attached to the hand they're shaking is the most fascinating American they've ever met, politicians are less likely to give themselves away. In part, they do this by convincing themselves that they aren't lying. As that preeminent prevaricator George Costanza once explained to Jerry Seinfeld, "it's not a lie if you believe."
All that said, what can we make of The Wink? I'm not a trained social-psychologist, but the most obvious conclusion is that the president conveys to viewers precisely the sentiments that a traditional wink would under normal conditions: Namely, that he believes he just made a clever point, or surprised you beyond your (or his own) expectations, or one-upped you in some way. Like the way my dad winks at me when he drops the last trump card on the table in a game of Spades to take the final trick.
Notice, for example, that Bush often Winks when he reaches that certain word, name or phrase - sometimes a tricky term or obscure reference - that the very construction of his sentence was designed to elicit. Even if he reached that marker by turns circuitous and ungrammatical, he arrives emphatically. Indeed, he often pauses an extra beat to permit the word or phrase - and The Wink itself - to fully sink in, before moving to his next thought. And "emphatically" here has twin meanings: Bush is being both earnest and physically signposting.
Care to see some examples of The Wink in action? Watch this video from Bush during the second part of the Bill O'Reilly interview, broadcast Tuesday night. (Find "video" and choose player preferences to watch.) What one realizes by watching The Wink - and don't blink, or you might miss them! - is how often Bush deploys the device and how versatile are its uses.
Following are four Winks (in chronological order during the segment), and my layman's attempt to translate into words the non-verbal message in each that I believe Bush is conveying - subconsciously, of course - to his viewers:
- When he excitedly says "15 percent" in reference to the tortured, "non-defense, non-homeland discretionary spending" budget growth rate, The Wink tells you, "Sure I've rung up a record, $422 billion deficit this year, but I can parse this one fact in such a way as to create the impression that I'm fiscally conservative...and just when you thought you had me boxed in there, eh, Bill?"
- When he cites "Subchapter S" in reference to small business loans, The Wink says, "You see, I can cite the federal tax code chapter - hell, even subchapter - and verse...so let my opponents who think I'm dumb choke on that!"
- When he mentions Lyndon Johnson in regards to Medicare, the subtext imparted by The Wink is, "Don't blame me for those bleeding-heart liberal Democrats who created all these damn programs, because if I'm going down for passing prescription drugs I'm smart enough to strap myself to LBJ and blow us both up, pal."
- Finally, and best of all, when Bush hits the phrase "on election day" - and notice here The Wink is accompanied by The Big Grin and The Left-Brow Raise - he's really predicting boastfully that, "Hey, talk all you want about how evenly divided the country is, O'Reilly, but we're gonna open a can of whoop-ass on Kerry this November - you'll see."
Traditional winking is politically dangerous, of course, especially now that a majority of voters are women. (Rest assured that the sketchy dude who winks at the ladies from the end of the bar ain't getting any tonight.) Aside from appropriate usage among friends or family members, winking is condescending, smarmy, and self-congratulatory - descriptions which Bush, with his reputation as a privileged frat boy, cannot afford to lend credence.
Yet somehow I suspect that Bush heartily executed more than his share of macho, full winks during his Yale frat boy years, if not long after his college days. The Wink we see today, during his political second-life, is a pathological but refined vestige from those younger days. Just because he's subtly sliding it past you, however, doesn't make it any less condescending, smarmy and self-congratulatory.
Indeed, "The Hoodwink" might be the better term for it. (wink)