Watching politicians with the sound off.
One of the insights I got from watching about 100 presidential events live and up close is that I am watching a performance.
Candidate events are a form of concert, a one-person stage play, or a stand-up comedy act. The words said by a candidate are intended to look spontaneous, and there will be new material, perhaps, but what audiences see is about an hour of well-scripted and practiced material. I think the biggest thing a person takes away from candidate events can be expressed in a few words, and it focuses on manner not denoted content.
There is a school of thought that candidate performances, and especially "debates," should be viewed by audiences without sound. The body language alone reveals whatever important interaction happened. Watched without sound would have focused attention on the strange moment in 2020 when Al Gore walked up to within ten inches of George W. Bush while Bush was talking. It was so strange, so mannered, so clearly a device, that I had the impression some advisor had instructed Gore to do a body-space invasion to look alpha-male-tough. Bush looked at him like he was weird. That defined the main take-away of the event: Weird artificial Gore. Soundlessly watching Trump lurking over Hillary in 2016 confirmed him as a bully and woman abuser, but a great many people welcomed it. Apparently, there was a lot of hostility toward Hillary.
In non-debate settings viewers pay attention to politicians when they give a sloppy salute getting off Marine One, when they stumble over sandbags, when they sip water while protecting a silk tie, when they stand on a balcony and whip off a mask.
Michael Trigoboff is a now-retired professor of computer science. His long-time career focused on the exacting and rigorous work of writing code that isn't buggy. He expresses to me frustration with fuzzy-thinking progressives who look for societal reasons -- excuses -- for crime, for poverty -- and top of mind for him -- bad computer code, and then want to shield those people from the consequences of their actions.
In computer code, "pretty good" is bad and subjective impressionism is worthless. Objective denoted code is what matters. I see things differently. In my view of politics, the denoted words are relevant but secondary. I think people generally, and voters especially, base their decisions on gut feel and intuition.
We have been advised to take Trump's words seriously, but not literally. Trigoboff is all about the literal. I wanted to see what a literal thinker observed about the GOP debate on Wednesday, having viewed it with the sound off.
Guest Post by Michael Trigoboff.
Here’s what the candidates at the Republican debate looked like to me with the sound turned off:
Mike Pence was dignified, massive, and presidential. By “massive”, I mean that Pence did not allow the actions of any of the other candidates to have a visible effect on his composure. You could see that he expected them to react to him, and not the other way around.
Nikki Haley spent a lot of her time looking indignant. She did not project the massiveness I mentioned about Pence. Occasionally she looked really happy, which was probably a good thing for her image, and was a lot more appealing than the indignance.
Tim Scott projected a very positive and happy image. It looked like it would be very nice to be around him. But he leaned back a lot, and did not ever seem to project himself forward, which made him seem uncertain and passive.
Ron DeSantis never smiled, except one time briefly at the end of the debate. He looked grumpy and dour, and had zero charisma. You would not want to be around him.
Vivek Ramaswamy was like a noisy little yapping dog; I wanted to take him right back to the pound. His fake teeth-whitened grin was in additional irritant. He looked like an arrogant lightweight.
Doug Burgum came across as a nice guy, but there was no force behind him. He looked tentative and unsure of himself.
Chris Christie looked like he had accidentally wandered in off the set of the Sopranos. He had the kind of massive presence that Pence did, but the flavor was menacing, as opposed to Pence’s more positive version.
Asa Hutchinson with his tentative smile just basically disappeared into the background. It was like no one was really there.
Thank you for the humor, Michael Trigoboff. There is so little to laugh about these days, especially in politics.