This is another reason why I love this man.  His movement is elegant, easy, balanced, free-flowing.  His limbs spiral fluidly around the central axis of his body.  He is clearly comfortable in his own body, and at ease in the direction he is taking.  This is not really something that you can accomplish by exercise alone.  It is an expression of the mind and heart.  The body mirrors the mind and vice versa.

By contrast, I have been puzzled and disturbed by what I see in Mr. Romney’s movement.  In public appearances, his movement is stiff and un-yeilding, his gait often shuffling, his steps small and tentative. His chest and upper back retreat as he seems to wade, rather than walk forward.

One of the oddest movement moments followed the third presidential debate when he was leaning forward to shake hands with members of the audience,  He seemed unable to maintain his balance, and his wife placed her hands on either side of him like tongs to steady him.

Given that around 90% of our information exchange is non-verbal, these movement clues should be important.  Read the body to read the man.

Today we saw the president in passing.  It looked a little like this.  At the exact moment that his motorcade was going by, my iphone powered down all by itself.

We had driven to Nashua, NH where he was doing an event with the legendary James Taylor.  We waited and walked in a long, long line, and then just a few moments before we would have gone through security, they closed it down.  8500 people before us, and they stopped admitting anyone else.

So we stood around hoping that they would stop putting away all the security, and when they didn’t we hoped they would set them up again and when they didn’t, we just stood there, wondering what to do next.  I asked a police officer where the motorcade would be, and he pointed up the street.  We walked up in that direction and suddenly, we were not permitted to walk any further in that particular direction, and were told by a military looking man to wait by the side of the road.  Clearly we were in the right place.  Presidential security, serious looking men and women in dark glasses, police in serious looking military green SWAT wear everywhere. We were backstage, behind the scenes, a part of the scene behind the scenes.

We waited.  Suddenly it was there.  The motorcade, preceded by many police cruisers, lots of black cars with flags and there he is we cheered I dropped my phone and he is gone.  Just like that.

We hung out for awhile where we could hear James Taylor, and then when the president started speaking we left because the sound system was giving us the sound of his voice but none of the actual words.

I felt exhilarated, not even disappointed.  It was an adventure, a nearness to this man who is of a kind of greatness and integrity I thought I would never see in my lifetime.  A good day.  Back to Laconia and more canvassing.

A busy day in the Laconia preparing for the visit by Dr. Jill Biden as well as a full weekend of canvassing.  She is a lovely, passionate, articulate woman making her fourth campaign stop of the day.

She spoke movingly about the threat to women posed by the retrograde politics of the Republicans.  She and a number of the women present at the event remember the old days.  We cannot go backwards in our civil liberties.  We cannot allow the government to determine women’s health care and reproductive choices.

Forward.

The Front

The Back