Posted 1/26/2009

OBAMA'S SMILE

While the new President is fully capable of looking serious, even stern, it's his smile that gets us.

A smile that lights up his face and fills us with hope.

A sweet smile which neutralizes the taste of a sour economy.

An optimistic smile which fills us with hope.

Is this wonderfully uplifting smile real – or simply well-practiced, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's grin?

During the Great Depression, Roosevelt always had himself photographed with a jaunty smile, gripping a cigarette holder upwardly thrust in an optimistic manner. It was an image which shouted, "Look at me! You have nothing to fear but fear itself!" But we later leaned that FDR was not a smiley man. In private, his face was serious, even sad.

Today the President is photographed so frequently by so many admirers and detractors that he cannot even stage-manage his face. Every minute it seems as if millions of cell phones and digital cameras are aimed at him. In over a year's worth of intense scrutiny, no one has been able to discount the warmth, power and natural consistency of the Obama smile.

President Ronald Reagan has a smile of folksy, friendly assurance. Liberal photo editors demanded "bad expression" pictures of the minions. But all they got were pleasant, calm smiles. Eventually the meanest of the liberal papers began to compare his smiling face to that of Howdy Dowdy. But "Dutch" Reagan smiled through it all, swamping his opponents in two elections.

The ability to smile is a very valuable asset. It's vital to someone meeting an important prospect for the first time. One salesman I know had great difficulty smiling. He just had a naturally serious face – even at parties. How did he do so well in new business solicitations? His wife told me he got up early every morning and practiced smiling in front of the mirror for ten minutes. She called it his "Big Buy Smile."

New research indicates that smiling comes naturally to some people (Obama), but is very difficult for others (Abraham Lincoln) In fact, the research states that smiling is not a learned trait, but a hereditary one.

Researchers at San Francisco State University studied blind Olympic athletes who obviously could not learn emotional facial expressions from others.

When the blind athletes won an event, they smiled just like their seeing competitors. The study concluded that emotional expressions like joy and anger are not learned, but hard-wired into the brain. (This explains why the intelligent salesman had to practice every morning – he simply could not learn to smile.)

Thus President Obama can thank his mother, father and grandparents for his winning smile and victory in the primary and general election.

But it does not follow that smiling people are happier than non-smilers. You can see it in Presidents.

George W. Bush was a naturally smiling man, but two terms in the White House aged him considerably. President Harry Truman was not a natural smiley person, yet seven years in the White House didn't age him a bit. He looked as good on his last day as he did on his first day. Truman attributed his non-aging during a period of extreme crisis at home and abroad to his ability to make decisions and not worry about them afterwards. He said all this with a very serious face.

Hopefully President Obama will be as successful as Harry Truman was – and leave office smiling.

Smiling – both him and us.

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