Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 2, 1993 TAG: 9302020143
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BEHRENS NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR PRESIDENT TODAY?
WILLIAM Jefferson Clinton, the nation's 42nd president, may be the first unabashed hugger elected to the august office.Who can forget his election-night embrace with running mate Al Gore? The autumnal image of campaigner Clinton hugging friends and relatives - men, women and children, even governors? The sight of five presidential bear hugs on the inaugural podium during the first hour of his presidency?
Early on, he demonstrated some unspoken, deeply felt article of faith: That every American deserved a hug, like it or not.
It is, indeed, hard to imagine George Washington and John Adams bonding with such zeal. It's harder to put George Bush and Dan Quayle into the picture.
But is this good for the country, this recurring display of warmth and caring to almost everyone from the most powerful leader in the world?
Is America ready for men who hug with unembarrassed affection, regardless of the recipient's gender or age?
Are we seeing the beginning of a more casual presidency or merely the transformation of the hug into a new and formalized ritual?
About a man hugging other men in public, no one should be truly surprised. Decades of the "Tonight Show" have given us a parade of celebrity-clinching. Years of 250-pound hugs on the football field have shown us enough he-men - at least the ones on the winning side - who were unashamed to give the joy of victory a physical expression.
These affectionate types may appear to some as a generation of men who hug other men too much. Still others have embraced a more serious side of hugging as a way to get in touch with the gentle regions of their masculine soul.
So say a variety of huggers, from Vietnam veterans to counter-culture activists, from men's-liberation devotees to those rebuilding their lives in drug- and alcohol-recovery programs. Their notion, that the road to mental health begins with a hug, is not a new one.
What interests and delights psychologists, men's-movement mavens, anthropologists and other people-watchers is that we've just never had a president who hugs like Bill Clinton does.
Martha Davis, a New York clinical psychologist who has just completed a study of the non-verbal communication of U.S. presidents, observes: "Clinton is more comfortable with physical closeness than any president I've studied - and he hugs everybody."
So younger Americans recognize Clinton as a man who can express warmth, tenderness and a wide range of emotions, says New York psychologist Patricia Doyle. They recognize him as a political leader who possesses the power to rule the nation, she says, while retaining the ability to express his need for "all the help I can get."
Clinton's candor is seen as "just a sign of the times" by Tom Williamson, chairman of the National Coalition of Free Men, a men's equal-rights group founded in the 1970s. All the hugging started in the era of the Vietnam War, Williamson says. "I remember veterans coming home and marching against the war in the 1970s, hugging each other and recognizing each other's pain and stress. They were able to express feelings much more easily than World War II vets could."
There are, of course, all sorts of non-sexual male hugs, and many have been recorded on film. Seeing good friends such as Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara embrace in "Husbands" was hardly off-putting. Nor was Robin Williams and co-star Cleavant Derricks in "Moscow on the Hudson." Much earlier, Lew Ayres and Louis Wolheim embraced in "All Quiet on the Western Front," and Robert De Niro and friends hugged farewell before going off to another war in "The Deerhunter," a classic example of ethnic (i.e., less taboo) and slightly-tipsy hugging.
Bill Clinton, of course, practices a more sober ceremonial hug: the affectionate pleased-to-meet-you hug, the victory hug, the simply-I-care hug. Most likely, the consolation hug between males is still taboo, at least in the political arena, and a Clinton-Gore embrace never would have happened on election night if they had lost.
What's important about the Clinton hug is that he is president of the United States, says adolescent-medicine specialist Holly Shaw of Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Manhasset, N.Y. "Clinton comes to the White House as a representative of a generation which almost institutionalized hugging," Shaw says, "a generation which reached adolescence in the early 1960s."
In the 1960s and '70s, the idea of men hugging other men, she goes on, "symbolized new comfort between men and a move toward humanizing their relationships, allowing them to express affection outside of a sexual context."
When Clinton was coming of age, the sexual revolution was prompting both men and women to examine stereotyping and the way they related to their own gender as well as to the opposite sex. "Now, looking back to the 1960s," Shaw says, "many people think everything was sexualized, `free love' and all that. But another thing that was really happening was a new search for ways to communicate. On the street, when men started to hug as an informal greeting instead of shaking hands, they were able to share feelings for another man without embarrassment. And it was a way to relate to the world in a new way."
Of course, football players and other athletes already had made hugging an acceptable way of showing feelings. "But the touching was limited to teammates and to the playing field, and it had a very specific, very clear meaning," Shaw recalls.
The seemingly uninhibited rough-housing on the ball field is set, however, in an atmosphere of "competitiveness and aggression," observes psychologist Doyle, "and for the players, that makes it more comfortable."
Younger Americans, psychologists say, should have no trouble understanding and accepting the demonstrative new president. With attitudes influenced by TV sitcoms, films and pop psychologists such as Leo Buscaglia, who believe everyone should hug more, public hugging has become commonplace among urban Americans under 40.
But the president is unlikely to galvanize others into a hugging craze. His style, says psychologist Martha Davis, is distinctively his own. "And contrary to reporters who have questioned the authenticity of his style, I think it's not at all a gambit. This guy is really comfortable with people of any age, gender or race, and he sends out a powerful subliminal message about his accessibility and concern for people that no president has done so well."
Clinton may turn governors hug-shy, and his style may be mocked as corny or political fakery by some. "But at a very deep level," Davis contends, "the message is very moving, a very democratic message that seems to break down hierarchies and is populist in a real sense."
A Vietnam veteran, she recalls, met Clinton on the campaign trail. When he told the candidate about the high rate of suicide among veterans, Clinton stopped to listen intensely, hugged the former soldier and both were in tears. Later, remembering the incident, Clinton invited the soldier to an inaugural luncheon.
"It may be easy to disparage, but Clinton's style seems quite involved with real feelings. I think he communicates in a language of exuberance, giving an `I-like-meeting-people' message that's not phony or specific to men or women, and it breaks down barriers."