Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Personally, I like the McPalin hug.

I watched live her return to Alaska tonight. There was a huge crowd there to greet her. She returned to see her son Track and his Striker Brigade off … They leave tomorrow … September 11th for Iraq.

The McPalin Hug makes them look real and connected, unlike this …

Or this …

For McCain and Palin, a new etiquette

By Elisabeth Bumiller - (IHT)

LEE’S SUMMIT, Missouri: For now, the rule is simple: Hug your running mate, kiss your wife.

When Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, came out on stage to congratulate his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, after her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last week, he gave her a hug, not a handshake. Palin got another hug at a rally here outside Kansas City on Monday.

The same McCain-Palin embrace — businesslike, to the point — was on display at a rally over the weekend in Colorado Springs, but this time McCain’s wife, Cindy, was on stage. Moving quickly after his clasp of his running mate, John McCain took a short side-step and planted a peck on his wife’s cheek.

It has been nearly a quarter century since Walter Mondale almost never touched Geraldine Ferraro in public when they shared the Democratic presidential ticket in 1984, and it is safe to say that times have changed. Back then, Mondale had a strict “hands off” policy and did not even put his palm on Ferraro’s back when the two stood side-by-side and waved with uplifted arms.

Anything more, and “people were afraid that it would look like, ‘Oh, my God, they’re dating,’ ” Ferraro recalled in a brief telephone interview on Monday, of what now seems like a political Victorian age.

But the second mixed-sex major-party presidential ticket in American history has nonetheless raised 21st-century questions about etiquette, body language and who hugs first. (John McCain was right to initiate the hugging as Palin’s hierarchical superior, an etiquette expert said.)

Already, there has been one noticeable shift in protocol: McCain now introduces his wife first, not Palin, when both are on stage. But it was not always that way: at his first postconvention rally with Palin, in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, last Friday, McCain began by lavishly praising Palin, who had just rocked the Republican convention. “Isn’t this the most marvelous running mate in the history of this nation?” McCain asked the roaring crowd, as his wife stood quietly by.

It was only after two full minutes of Palin accolades that John McCain finally mentioned his wife and her own speech to the convention. “And I love the job that Cindy did last night,” McCain said, then swiftly moved to his own remarks.

By the end of the day, in a switch that has stuck, Cindy McCain started getting top billing: “Could I first introduce to you the woman who gave a great speech last night, the best speech of all, Cindy McCain?” John McCain shouted out to a raucous crowd in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

John McCain’s closest adviser, Mark Salter, insisted that there had been no behind-the-scenes stage direction — “Nobody said, ‘Cindy first’ ” — and that no one in the campaign had discussed hugging etiquette or protocol between McCain and Palin. “They’re going to behave like normal human beings,” he said. “Nobody ever told him, ‘Just shake hands.’ ”

Nonetheless, etiquette experts weighed in on the hugs, some more approvingly than others.

“He’s hugging her to show the world that he’s all for her, and protecting her, but she doesn’t need that,” said Letitia Baldrige, the manners authority and former White House social secretary to Jacqueline Kennedy.

As a general rule, Baldrige recommends a warm, firm handshake between male and female corporate executives and finds embarrassing “all this fake hugging that goes on when people greet each other on television.”

But for McCain and Palin, Baldrige said, “it’s O.K., because we accept anything now.”

Ann Marie Sabath, the founder of At Ease Inc., a business etiquette training firm, deemed the hugging “perfectly fine” and said that once McCain, the top rooster in the pecking order, started the hugging, Palin was welcome to initiate a hug with him. “It’s a form of professional endearment,” she said. “Getting closer than two arms’ length when you know the other person says, ‘I respect you, we have a comfort level, we have a professional bond.’ ”

Christine Todd Whitman, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush who 15 years ago was the first woman elected as New Jersey’s governor, said that she, for one, had embraced many of her male counterparts, as long as she knew them well. “I gave them lots of hugs and kisses, depending on the governor,” she said. (Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania was one, John Engler of Michigan was another.)

Comfort level is a major factor in hugging protocol. When Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton made their first joint appearance after their bitter fight for the Democratic nomination, in Unity, New Hampshire, in June, Obama placed his hand on Clinton’s shoulder but held back from a full hug. Still, the two did share a few whispers, and Obama placed his hand squarely on Clinton’s back when the two stood for the classic side-by-side political wave.

So far, the McCain-Palin hugs have been brief and a little stiff, in part because McCain cannot raise his arms up high because of injuries sustained as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. But Palin, too, appears to keep a distance.

She “seems to be cognizant that she is wandering into the danger zone,” Christopher Buckley, the novelist and longtime satirist of the ways of Washington, said in an e-mail message, “with the result that as she hugs him, she leans away from him so as to insert some chaste space between them.”

Buckley added, “As the nuns used to say before school dances, ‘Leave room for the Holy Ghost.’ ”

Also, Bash emails me:

when I was a minister, my senior pastor taught all about the “appropriate” way to deal with hugging ladies, it is the official church “Side hug”…stand next to her and put one arm on her shoulders and give a gentle hug, both torsos facing straight ahead like tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum and if they lean in for a polite peck turn your head so your cheeckbone touches her temple very quickly then back off.I shit you not, there’s a ton of shit in ministry that goes along with men and women greeting and touching.

NEVER face to face full frontal hug, or kiss with lips anywhere.