The idea that Clark's slow blinking could be a learned behavior was both fascinating and disturbing, so I called up Col. Thomas Kolditz of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, from which Clark graduated in 1966. Kolditz, a social psychologist and the head of West Point's department of behavioral sciences and leadership, made it clear to me that he knows nothing about Clark's specific experience at West Point and that nothing in the school curriculum focuses on blinking. He did say, however, that the customs and traditions at the academy reinforce the importance of eye contact between persons, and that cadets regularly practice public speaking in everything from English to mathematics classes. "It could be that [Clark] has practiced [not blinking] somewhat," said Kolditz with a laugh. "But it could also come down to something as simple as his tear ducts."

Tear ducts may, in fact, have something to do with it. Dr. Joseph Kubacki, chairman of the ophthalmology department at the Temple University School of Medicine, told me that blink rates vary according to one's level of concentration (the higher the concentration, the lower the rate), the thickness of one's tears (the thicker the tears, the fewer the blinks, for the most part), and age (babies and young children blink a lot less than adults). "Maybe [Clark] has always been that way," Kubacki told me. "The only disease I know of in which people blink infrequently is Parkinson's, but that's due to a lack of motor skills." I giggled nervously and Kubacki backtracked a bit. "Don't quote me as saying that I think Clark has Parkinson's, OK?"

Clark's low blink rate probably doesn't augur a descent into debilitation, but it does serve as a sort of double-edged sword; he can come across as intensely focused and calm but also robotic, more reptilian than mammalian. It can seem creepy, because, as Givens explains, primates express emotion and an arousal of the nervous system by blinking more. "My husband was just commenting on Clark's unusualness," wrote a woman on John Kerry's official Web site last week. "Clark never blinks. It creeps [my husband] out." Kurt F., a 44-year-old Virginia architect who posted a comment about Clark's blinking on his blog last fall, told me that he remembers feeling vaguely uncomfortable whenever Clark appeared television but he couldn't put his finger on exactly why. "Then last fall, Chris Matthews mentioned something about Clark's not blinking on 'Hardball,'" he said. "And I thought, 'My god, that's it!'"

There's no doubt that right-wing pundits and opinion makers would be more than happy to use such statements as ammunition against Clark ("Hardball" guest Don Imus called him a "psycho" just a few moments before Chris Matthews commented on his not blinking). But conservatives have a lot to answer for when it comes to the blink rates of their own candidates. If, as asserted, a high blink rate signals deception or stress, then the Republicans have done a lot to seem mistrustful and manic. During the fall 2000 presidential debate, for example, the Hartford Courant's Susan Campbell counted the number of times Al Gore and George W. Bush blinked. Bush won (or, rather, lost), with a final tally of 2,867 to Gore's 1,808. In 1996, Bob Dole entered the annals of presidential-debate blinking history when, after being questioned about the nation's economy, he hit a blink rate of 163 a minute. And Richard Nixon's blink rate increased markedly during the Watergate hearings and press conferences.

But although Clark's low blink rate commands attention, it can also blind some culture watchers to the content of his message, which does not necessarily bode well for his campaign. "You can't hear what he's saying anymore because you're just watching his eyes and waiting for him to blink," said Kurt F., the blogger architect in Virginia. "It's like visual noise." Joyce Newman, a well-known media coach in New York, says that she's had clients who blinked too much, but never the opposite. And however much of a liability not blinking could be, she said, she would never coach a client to blink more. "Then they'd be focusing on their blinking and not the conversation. You can't change a behavior like that," she explained.

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