6: The Glass Mask: MI in Leadership and Romance

In the mid-1980s, as the Reagan administration rolled out its complex and politically delicate tax-reform agenda, White House press secretary Larry Speakes developed a memorable way of managing the press’s impatience for details. When reporters pressed him to reveal more than the administration was prepared to disclose, Speakes would smile and say he could only “show a little ankle” (Speakes & Pack, 1988). The phrase – borrowed from an older courtship metaphor – was instantly understood. It signaled partial revelation, controlled allure, and strategic restraint. What made the remark so effective was not its humor but its insight: it framed political leadership in unmistakably romantic terms. Just as romantic attraction often depends on pacing, withholding, and the careful calibration of intimacy, Speakes implied that effective leadership also involves regulating access – deciding when to reveal, when to withhold, and how to keep an audience engaged without surrendering control. “Showing a little ankle” was thus not a throwaway joke but an intuitive recognition that influence – whether over voters or lovers – depends on the same embodied logic of timing, restraint, and expressive control that lies at the heart of MI.