Want to win a handshake war? Well, don’t copy Donald Trump. . .
By GYLES BRANDRETH, who received tuition in the correct etiquette fromtypes a most surprising source
THEY used to say the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Now it seems that it’s the hand that squeezes hardest. Last Thursday, in Brussels, ahead of the Nato summit, the world witnessed the ultimate handshake stand-off as the 45th President of the United States, Donald John Trump, came eye-to-eye and fist-to-fist with Emmanuel Macron, the new President of France and his country’s youngest (and physically fittest) leader.
As they locked hands, their grips tightened, their knuckles visibly whitened. Neither blinked, but Trump was the first to pull his hand away. The Donald had met his match.
Afterwards, Macron revealed his ‘firm handshake’ was ‘not innocent’ and that he had seen it as ‘a moment of truth’.
The French president, shorter, and slighter than his American counterpart, was not going to be dominated. ‘I wanted to show that I would not make small concessions, even symbolic ones.’
He had obviously been studying Trump’s style. The US President sees himself as an alpha male. He needs to mark out his territory and then dominate it.
On the same European trip, he was pictured rudely shoving the prime minister of Montenegro aside as he pushed his way to the front of the crowd of world leaders and then stood, alone, eyes scanning the horizon, jaw jutting forward, preening.
The handshake is part of Trump’s power-play. Not only is he trying to assert his superiority, he also wants to emphasise your subservience.
He usually does this by stretching out his hand to greet you, grabbing your hand firmly and pulling you towards him. He does this to unbalance you and to have you bend towards him.
In ancient China an individual showed submission to the Emperor by abasing himself before him and kissing the ground at his feet in a kowtow. This is the 21st-Century American equivalent. Trump wants you to kowtow to him and, with brute force, he makes sure you do. When Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe visited the White House, the president yanked the poor fellow towards him and then turned to the cameras to grin triumphantly.
But Justin Trudeau, the young and vigorous Canadian Prime Minister, anticipated Trump’s kowtow tactic by gripping his shoulder at their first encounter.
It’s clear that Trump’s idea of handling the other guy is to yank and squeeze him into submission. It’s equally clear that when it comes to women, he doesn’t quite know what to do.
LAST week a video emerged showing Hillary Clinton preparing for her television debates with Trump in the presidential election campaign. She walked onto a mock stage and tried to avoid a bear hug coming her way from a Trump stand-in.
In the real debates, Trump tried to dominate Ms Clinton physically, prowling behind her.
We know from his remarks to US TV host Billy Bush, caught in 2005, that his idea of greeting an attractive woman is to grab her by her private parts. ‘When you’re a star,’ he bragged, ‘they let you do it. You can do anything.’ When welcoming German chancellor Angela Merkel to the White House, he was clearly not sure what to do, so when she proffered her hand and said, ‘Shall we do a handshake?’ he deliberately ignored her.
Evidently, he took more of a fancy to Theresa May and when he entertained her at the White House in January, having shaken her hand, he held it.
Diplomatically, Mrs May said: ‘He was being a gentleman.’
Well, I am something of an authority on good manners. When I was young I was lucky enough to know Barbara Cartland, the author of so many romantic novels. She gave me her book on etiquette and explained that manners really do make a man.
You can trust me when I say that when it comes to the etiquette of handshaking, a ‘gentleman’ is one thing Donald Trump is not.
According to Barbara Cartland, ‘a big handshake’ is ‘a sure sign of a little man’. A proper handshake should be ‘firm but not oppressive’.
Ms Cartland, who died aged 98 in 2000, was clear that nobody welcomes a clammy handshake, nor one so weak that it feels like a caress from ‘a wet fish’, but she was equally clear the well- mannered man never gives a ‘finger-cruncher’.
Ms Cartland told me the man she most admired was Lord Mountbatten, and his handshake was, as he was, ‘decisive but not in the least aggressive’.
A courteous handshake means looking the other person in the eye, and thinking about whose hand you’re shaking.
I recall meeting the virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the delicacy of his handshake. He apologised, explaining he needed to protect his fingers.
Glenn Gould, the great Canadian classical pianist, went one further. When people came to greet him with a hand extended, he handed them a card that read: ‘A pianist’s hands are sometimes injured in ways which cannot be predicted. Needless to say, this could be quite serious. Therefore I will very much appreciate it if handshaking can be avoided. Rest assured that there is no intent to be discourteous.’
But Trump is not thinking of others when he meets them. He is thinking about himself. He needs to be the biggest man in the room and, when he isn’t, there’s trouble. The recently fired FBI director, James Comey, is 6ft 8in tall, a good 6in taller Trump. Of course, he had to go.
Russian president Vladimir Putin is just 5ft 6in, and you don’t need to be a psychologist to reckon his commitment to body-building has something to do with his stature.
That said, by all accounts, his handshake is a normal one. Last week Putin, meeting Macron outside Paris, managed to shake hands without causing a diplomatic incident, if perfunctorily.
I like to think my handshake is a normal one, too: firm but friendly. That said, when I first became a parliamentary candidate, I was told to toughen it up. One of the frightfully proper
who ran the local branch of the Conservatives, the party I was running for, told me on our first day out canvassing, ‘I’m sorry to tell you that you have the handshake of a lily-livered Liberal Democrat – weak, weak, weak. Without a firm grasp of their hands, the voters won’t believe you’ve got a firm grasp of anything. Get a grip, man.’
I did as I was told and, once elected, found that by custom British MPs never shake hands when meeting one another.
The origin of the handshake is in medieval chivalry. You did it to prove your hand did not conceal a weapon. MPs are all ‘honourable members’, so don’t need to prove it by shaking hands.
In a civilised world, handshakes should never be weapons of intimidation. A proper handshake is a sign of friendship and trust. So, when buying an antique, a handshake seals the deal.
FREEMASONS have a variety of secret finger and thumb movements (known as ‘tokens’) to let fellow masons know they’re dealing with a friend.
In sport, at the end of the game winners and losers shake hands as a sign of goodwill and sportsmanship. Argentine football coach Mauricio Pochettino says a handshake regime for his Spurs squad – with players encouraged to shake hands before training – boosted team spirit.
‘When you touch a person you can feel, you can translate emotion,’ he explains, poetically.
Handshakes are revealing. Trump’s tells us almost all we need to know about him. Nelson Mandela had quite a gentle handshake. In the long run, history suggests, it’s the gentle touch that comes out on top.
Trump wants to squeeze the other guy into submission