Analyzing the president's handwriting

The Times of London reported today that President Bush posted a message on a "wishing tree" in a Tanabata ceremony at the G8 summit in Japan. His handwritten note was hung in the branches of a black bamboo tree.



President Bush wrote, "I wish for a world free from tyranny: the tyranny of hunger, disease; and free from tyrannical governments. I wish for a world in which the universal desire for liberty is realized. I wish for the advance of new technologies that will improve the human condition and protect our environment."



Because President Bush has an unusual handwriting, America Wants To Know called in our on-staff psychic medium and asked her to contact the spirit of Dr. Hugo von Hagen, the noted graphologist and author of the 1902 book, Reading Character from Handwriting.

After half an hour of trumpets and tambourines flying pointlessly around the room we sent her home and just read the book ourselves.

The first thing we noticed about President Bush's handwriting is that it's large. "Large handwriting indicates enterprise," Dr. von Hagen wrote, "desire to do great things, nobility, pride."

It's apparent from the writing that the president uses heavy pressure with his pen. "Resoluteness, will power, obstinate diligence," Dr. von Hagen says.

We also noticed that the president's writing is slightly chaotic, not even and harmonious. Dr. von Hagen advises that "unharmonious" writing indicates "weak character, hard work to keep himself under control."

Do you see how the baseline of the writing is kind of wavy? If you drew a line under each letter in the word "wish," for example, you'd have almost a zig-zag instead of a level baseline.

Dr. von Hagen says that's a sign of unfaithfulness.

The letter "t" is crossed very low almost all the time. That indicates "perseverance and resistance," Dr. von Hagen says, and the long letters, "g" and "y" are "more developed above the line than below," indicating "idealism, mental and spiritual interests strongest."

Spooky, isn't it? Wait, it gets better.

We might have been forewarned about the federal budget deficit if we'd known that when "writing is drawn out wide" it indicates "immoderation, superficiality, generosity, carelessness," and when "words have much space between each other," it's an indication of "waste."

One of the most striking features of the president's handwriting is the way the letters in his words are frequently not connected. You can see that there's a space on each side of the "i" in "wish" and a space between the "y" and "r" in the word "tyranny." There's a space after the "g" and before the "m" in "governments" and if you look closely you can see many more.

This is what Dr. von Hagen says about that:

"Writers who never connect their letters, but always leave them separated, have no deductive powers, but have very much intuitive instinct instead. They judge largely by their sense of feeling. Such natures are rather difficult to get along with, they are always hard to convince, very nervous and sensitive and they often show stubbornness to a marked degree. When words and letters are more or less connected or disconnected, the graphologist must always weigh carefully the average number of connections or disconnections before passing his opinion. The more connections between letters, syllables and words, the more logic, sense of reality and adaptability are possessed by the writer."

And the fewer connections between letters, syllables and words, the less logic, sense of reality and adaptability.

Hey, we have no one to blame but ourselves, the book's been out since 1902.


Copyright 2008

.