As best as I can tell from reading people who know what they are talking about, Obama’s bow to Japanese Emperor Akihito was a protocol mistake. I will even go so far as to say that as a confirmed democrat (note the small “d”), that an American leader bowing to the royalty of another nation makes be cringe a bit. However, it is one of those things that strikes me as ultimately not a big deal. The Emperor is not going to take it as a sign that the US now belongs to Japan nor will al Qaeda will now feel more emboldened to attack us.
However, it remains an object of much partisan wrangling. For example, I was pointed to a column in WaTi by Wesley Puden (Obama bows, the nation cringes):
Not bowing to foreign potentates was what 1776 was all about. His predecessors learned with no difficulty that the essence of America is that all men stand equal and are entitled to look even a king, maybe particularly a king, straight in the eye. Can anyone imagine George Washington, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson making a similar gesture of servile submission?
In regards to Adams, at least, I would refer Pruden to David McCullough’s book, John Adams on page 335 and Adam’s first visit to present himself as the US’s representative to the court of King George III:
When the door opened, they proceeded, Adams, as instructed, making three bows, or “reverences,” one on entering, another halfway, a third before “the presence.”
“The United States of America have appointed me their minister plenipotentiary to Your Majesty,” Adams began, nearly overcome by emotion.
Granted, Adams wasn’t president at the time, but he was still the embodiment of the USA before the crown, and he bowed (thrice!) and it wasn’t just an attempt to be polite or culturally appropriate. And yet, somehow, the republic endured.
Further, LGM has a series of photos of Ike bowing to various foreign potentates (and look, here’s Nixon). Yes, Obama’s bow was deeper than those (see my first sentence). However, these examples rather undercut Pruden’s assertions about bowing.
The column itself ultimately sums to a lengthy non sequitur and comes to a conclusion with the following:
Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy ’60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to "hope" for "change." It’s no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.
He no doubt wants to "do the right thing" by his lights, but the lights that illumine the Obama path are not necessarily the lights that illuminate the way for most of the rest of us.
Pardon? “natural instinct or blood impulse”? “sired by a Kenya father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World”? I fear that Kathy at Left in Alabama gets it right with her post title: Racist, Xenophobic, and Clueless. How else does one interpret the idea that Obama is someone not like “the rest of us”—after all, his father was black and a foreigner.
At a minimum, taking the column in this direction undercuts whatever other points he was attempting to make.
Indeed, the very idea that one’s parentage and “blood” is the manner by which a person should be judged and/or that their ability to be like “the rest of us” is linked to such is hardly in sync with the revolutionary ideals of 1776 that Pruden cites.
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November 19th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
At a minimum, taking the column in this direction undercuts whatever other points he was attempting to make.
No, it simply reveals what bile the entire “point” actually is. (I think “grungy 60s” should have been enough to make this “point,” actually.)
November 19th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
You are correct. In trying to be polite I soft-pedaled there more than intended.