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James Polk: Handshake Technique

   
 
Musculoskeleton
hand shaking		 It appears that repetitive strain injuries from hand-shaking is an occupational illness among politicians. Like William McKinley, Polk developed a technique allowing him to "shake hands during the whole day without suffering any bad effects from it" [2a].

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 Polk explained his hand-shaking technique in his diary. He explained that a man should [2a]:
shake and not be shaken, grip and not be gripped, taking care always to squeeze the hand of his adversary as hard as he squeezed him.... I could generally anticipate when I was to have a strong grip, and that when I observed a strong man approaching I generally took advantage of him by being a little quicker than he was and seizing him by the tips of his fingers, giving him a hearty shake, and thus preventing him from getting a full grip upon me.

Although Polk amused people when he talked about this, he was serious. His diary notes "There is great art in shaking hands." We should not be surprised. The recent best-selling political novel Primary Colors talks about hand-shaking in some detail [1]. Comments about the hand-shakes of William McKinley (positive) and Woodrow Wilson (negative) have also been published.

     Resources[Top]
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  1. Anonymous. Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics. New York: Warner Books, 1996. ISBN 0446604275 @ Amazon
        "Anonymous" was later revealed to be Joel Klein.

  2. Boller, Paul F. Jr. Presidential Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-19-502915-1 @ Amazon   [a] p. 101

  3. MacMahon, Edward B. and Curry, Leonard. Medical Cover-Ups in the White House. Washington, DC: Farragut, 1987. ISBN 0-918535-01-8 @ Amazon

  4. The James Polk web page at the White House.

  5.  (1 match when checked in November 2003)
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