Did Ron DeSantis shake his wife’s hand?
In a campaign full of tense social interactions and clumsy pantomimes of warmth, Ron DeSantis’ meeting with his wife during Wednesday night’s presidential primary debate in Des Moines was one of the oddest.
During the second commercial break, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, walked to the edge of the stage and bent down to shake hands with Gov. Kim Reynolds, the Republican of Iowa, and her husband. Then, with businesslike precision, he grasped the outstretched palm of Casey DeSantis, the first lady of Florida.
Did he just shake his wife’s hand? The spectators in the room were stunned.
Interactions with spouses during the campaign can be fraught, even for the most adept politicians and the warmest of marriages. To be fair, Mr. DeSantis was on a raised podium, on a tight schedule, which made a hug impractical. Too much affection carries its own political risks.
And who knows? Perhaps The Handshake was some kind of inside joke, or an attempt to create a signature routine, like Barack and Michelle Obama’s coy fist bump (which was weaponized as a “terrorist fist bump” by Obama’s political enemies).
Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, declined to comment but suggested the story was unimportant four days after the Iowa caucuses.
Somehow the chaste encounter was incongruously reminiscent of an opposite moment in campaign history: a passionate kiss between Vice President Al Gore and his then-wife, Tipper, on the stage of the 2000 Democratic National Convention. (The kiss was widely interpreted as an attempt by a somewhat rigid candidate to loosen up his public image. It also provided a striking contrast to the painful marital developments during Bill Clinton’s second term.)
Relationships between spouses are invariably a delicate part of presidential campaigns: the emotional highs and lows, the invasion of privacy, the dissonant strangeness of a show in which one half of a marriage is the star and the other half a supporting hand, and the partnership itself is the subject of research.
Today, the ubiquity of photographers and smartphones means that every clumsy hug, every hastily withdrawn hand, every stray gesture becomes fodder for tabloids and critical analysts.
Other Republican candidates in this cycle have had their own awkward romantic moments. At the end of November’s primary debate, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott was joined on stage by his girlfriend Mindy Noce — a pompous public debut after months of speculation about his romantic life. Days later he quit the race.
Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, has been largely absent from the campaign trail this year. (During his first term, Mrs. Trump was photographed several times apparently refusing to hold his outstretched hand.) Nikki Haley’s husband, a commissioned officer in the U.S. National Guard, is deployed to Africa.
Even the way politicians talk about their spouses can raise eyebrows. Mitt Romney once described the “pair of Cadillacs.” There has been much speculation about whether Mike Pence calls his wife ‘mother’.
Along the way, interactions between Mr. DeSantis and his wife have added a degree of warmth to campaign events that are laser-focused on policy. When she addresses the audience on stage, he often waits patiently to the side and stares lovingly at her.
Nicholas Nehamas reporting contributed.