Following up on yesterday’s theme, body language is the essential component in communications. If they can see you or hear you, how you look and how you sound matters more than what you say.

Want proof? Look at the reviews for Tony Snow’s start in the White House briefing scrum:

McClellan’s style—a few posts ago I called it “strategic non-communication”—was the big loser in press accounts of Snow’s debut.

* Financial Times: “Snow, a former Fox News presenter, brought a new, idiosyncratic style to the daily briefing that had regressed to an arid showcase of administration talking points.”

* Dana Milbank in the Washington Post: “Rather than repeating rote refusals to answer questions, Snow had a quick comeback for every occasion.”

* William Triplett, Daily Variety: “Unlike his predecessor, Scott McClellan, who developed a rep as a brusque stonewaller, Snow, his hands casually holding the podium sides, generally engaged questioners with eye contact and a seeming desire to answer.”

* Vaughn Ververs at CBS Public Eye: “Where McClellan often appeared robotic and repetitive, Snow was much more expansive, getting into areas of broad strategy and seeming engaged as much in the debate of the immigration issue as in an explanation of the president’s position.”

* Michael Scherer in Salon: “[Tony Snow] is, in other words, a human being, and that makes him a dramatic departure from his predecessor, Scott McClellan, the doughy master of equivocation and non sequitur who behaved most days like a misfiring automaton, barely betraying any light behind his eyes.”

If your talking points sound like talking points, the message you are really sending is “I’m clueless, I’m hiding something, and I’m out of touch with reality.”

A little sincerity goes a long way, even when delivering news (or not delivering it) that one might not like.