“Awkward” was the word one body language expert used to describe the tarmac hug between Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Vice President Kamala Harris as they prepared to travel to North Carolina on Thursday. The two rivals–make no mistake, they’re rivals–are teaming up to sell Biden’s infrastructure plan. Buttigieg, naturally as head of the Department of Transporation, has more invested here, but Harris seems to be tacked on for good measure. Perhaps after complaining that she got stuck with unwanted jobs, like securing the border, she was upgraded to travel around and pretend to drive electric busses instead.
Body language says more than spoken language when it comes to revealing true feelings. According to Scott Rouse, a widely-respected body-language expert, the Harris-Buttigieg tarmac greeting is a textbook case of two people who would rather be hugging a starving grizzly bear than each other:
For starters, the two embraced on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Tuesday morning. Rouse said the hug was somewhat awkward. “Her feet are pointed toward him, whereas his are sort of spread a little bit,” he told me. “But his left foot is pointing just a little bit away from her. When you want to focus on a person or a thing in a room, or in your surroundings, your feet will point toward that person. He seems a little bit ill at ease because he’s back and he’s leaning forward.”
What’s more, Rouse said, is the space between them. “If you really are happy to see someone, you’re going to step right up to them and hug them and pull them toward you,” he told me. “He’s trying to make space from her where she’s a little bit more into it than he is,” he added.
Harris’ staff has said a lot of not-nice things about Buttigieg and they seem to be jealous of all the attention he’s getting. You can bet that Harris herself feels the same way. She was supposed to be the heir to the Biden throne, not this clean-cut smarmy kid from Indiana sent to the transportation department to play with his cars and trucks. Instead, Harris gets tough jobs like explaining Biden’s failing border policies while Buttigieg gets a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan to manage and sell to the public.
At no other time has it been more evident, though, that Buttigieg is much better at connecting with voters than Harris ever was, and that most of the time she looks unnatural and inauthentic:
That’s Kamala Harris pretending to drive an all-electric bus, then honking the horn.
“The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round,” Harris said, letting out a big laugh as Pete Buttigieg looks on. pic.twitter.com/gGNw7pQvNM
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) December 2, 2021
That picture itself looks awkward, and Harris does her best to come across as immature and, quite frankly, not ready for primetime as a Vice President, let alone President.
Kyle Smith, writing in the New York Post, asks whether anyone is buying this “ridiculous Pete and Kamala show”:
H and B managed to hug while looking like they wished they were in two different time zones, just as their political fortunes are going in completely different directions: Buttigieg is maybe even a little ahead of schedule in the ruthless mega-map to the presidency he probably devised when he was drinking chocolate milk in kindergarten eight or nine years ago, while Harris is looking like the first sitting vice president who will ever cackle her way to political oblivion.
Where have we seen this movie before? Two unlikely sidekicks join forces to travel the country and save the family business from certain bankruptcy? One a well-spoken boring suit, the other a mess that shouldn’t be taken out in public very often. Let the comedy write itself!
Wait, here it is:
In this case, the family business is America, and it’s currently being run into the ground by President Joe Biden. I’ll let you decide whether Pete Buttigieg or Kamala Harris best resembles the character played by Chris Farley.
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