Did Ron DeSantis Shake His Wife’s Hand?

In a campaign full of strained social interactions and clumsy pantomimes of warmth, Ron DeSantis’s encounter with his wife at the presidential primary debate in Des Moines on Wednesday night was one of the more curious.

During the second commercial break, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, strode to the edge of the stage and reached down to shake hands with Gov. Kim Reynolds, Republican of Iowa, and her husband. Then, with a businesslike rigor, he grasped the outstretched palm of Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady.

Did he just shake his wife’s hand? Onlookers in the room were bewildered.

Interactions with spouses on the campaign trail can be fraught, even for the most adept politicians and for the warmest of marriages. To be fair, Mr. DeSantis was standing on an elevated stage, on a tight timetable, making an embrace impractical. Too much affection runs its own political risks.

And who knows? Maybe The Handshake was some sort of inside joke, or an effort to create a signature routine, like Barack and Michelle Obama’s coy fist bump (which were weaponized by Mr. Obama’s political foes as a “terrorist fist jab.”)

Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, declined to provide a comment but suggested that the story was unimportant four days out from the Iowa caucuses.

Somehow, illogically, the chaste encounter brought to mind a polar opposite moment in campaign history: a passionate kiss between Vice President Al Gore and his wife at the time, Tipper, onstage at the Democratic National Convention in 2000. (The Kiss was widely interpreted as an effort by a somewhat rigid candidate to loosen up his public image. It was also a noted contrast to the painful marital developments during Bill Clinton’s second term.)

Spousal relations are, invariably, a delicate part of presidential campaigns: the emotional highs and lows, the disruption of privacy, the discordant weirdness of a show in which one half of a marriage is the star and the other a supporting hand, and the partnership itself is the subject of scrutiny.

Today, the omnipresence of photographers and smartphones means that each unwieldy smooch, every hastily withdrawn hand, every stray gesture becomes fodder for tabloids and scrutinizing analysts.

Other Republican candidates this cycle have had their own awkward romantic moments. At the end of the primary debate in November, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina was joined onstage by his girlfriend, Mindy Noce — a stilted public debut after months of speculation about his romantic life. Days later, he dropped out of the race.

Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, is largely absent from the campaign trail this year. (During his first term, Mrs. Trump was photographed on several occasions apparently declining to hold his outstretched hand.) Nikki Haley’s husband, a commissioned officer in the U.S. National Guard, is deployed in Africa.

Even the way politicians talk about their spouses can raise eyebrows. Mitt Romney once described his wife’s “couple of Cadillacs.” Much speculation has surrounded whether Mike Pence refers to his wife as “Mother.”

On the trail, the interactions between Mr. DeSantis and his wife have added a degree of warmth to campaign events that are laser-focused on policy. When she addresses the crowd onstage, he often waits patiently off to the side, staring at her with a loving expression.

Nicholas Nehamas contributed reporting.