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On the receiving side, the handshake may be a form of souvenir collecting. My father used to keep a framed photograph of himself shaking hands with the young Richard Nixon, the two of them beaming at each other; my father posted a little sign at the bottom of the picture: COUNT YOUR FINGERS. Historical continuities: Brooke Astor, now 97, remembers the day when, as a little girl, she shook the hand of Henry Adams. I recall the day when I was a child working for the summer as a Senate page and the aged Herbert Hoover visited the Senate chamber, not a celebrity so much as a curiosity. He looked like a Rotarian Santa Claus. After the Senators and pages all shook his hand--a dry hand, soft and bony at the same time, like grasping a small, fragile bird--another page, overcome by his (rather forgiving) sense of history, exclaimed, "I'm never going to wash my hand again!"
If the social handshake has its anthropological origins in the idea of primitive man showing he was not carrying a weapon, the political handshake springs from long ago when a king's touch might do magic and when the power of such connection seemed infinitely more pertinent than the potential germs. To touch was to partake somehow--maybe even through the germs--of the king's magic. Surely voters will imagine that when they shake hands with Donald Trump, gold will rub off. (Of course, bad magic may also be communicated. Maybe the handshake with Herbert Hoover many years ago explains why, from time to time, I am visited by a great depression.)
If Trump were to think about it, he might be grateful that contact with the electorate is not more intimate than it is. Suppose it were customary for a politician to kiss not only an occasional baby but also every voter in that mating-goose, cocktail-party way? It could be even worse. Among some tribes in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, men say hello by genially clasping each other's genitals. Trump should be relieved he won't have to work that kind of rope line.