THAT NOW-FAMOUS BOW BEFORE THE EMPEROR - AT 9:20 A.M. ET:  President Obama's now-famous bow in Tokyo is still reverberating, and is likely to come up periodically in the political wars.  It's the second great Obama bow, the first delivered to the king of Saudi Arabia some months back.  Japan gave us Pearl Harbor and Saudi Arabia gave us Islamic fundamentalism, so the president must have chosen his bows carefully.

Wes Pruden, the acerbic columnist for the Washington Times, a man who writes as if he has nothing to lose, provides a great take on the latest bow:

A little traveling, like a little learning, can be a dangerous thing. Barack Obama on the loose in a foreign land is enough to frighten protocol officers and embarrass the rest of us.

Embarrass?  Why, they're not embarrassed in Cambridge or Beverly Hills.

So far it's a memorable trip. He established a new precedent for how American presidents should pay obeisance to kings, emperors, monarchs, sovereigns and assorted other authentic man-made masters of the universe. He stopped just this side of the full grovel to the emperor of Japan, risking a painful genuflection if his forehead had hit the floor with a nasty bump, which it almost did...

...Now we know why Mr. Obama stunned everyone with an earlier similar bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, only the bow to the Japanese emperor was far more flamboyant, a sign of a really deep sense of inferiority. He was only practicing his bow in Riyadh. Sometimes rituals are learned with difficulty. It took Bill Clinton months to learn how to return a military salute worthy of a commander in chief; like any draft dodger, he kept poking a thumb in his eye until he finally got it.

Yes, I forgot the Clinton salute, and the learning curve. 

Some of the president's critics are giving him a hard time, and it's true that this president seems never to have studied much American history. 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? Or Harry Truman? Or FDR, who famously served the lowly hot dog, with ballpark mustard, to the king and queen of England? John F. Kennedy, on the eve of a trip to London, sharply warned Jackie not to curtsy to the queen.

I particularly liked FDR giving the king and queen some hot dogs.  Great gesture, great demonstration that we see royalty as human, and not above us.

But 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."

Yes, sadly, I'm afraid that's right.  They relish the idea that Obama is the first "post-American" president.

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. This is good news only for Jimmy Carter, who may yet have to give up his distinction as our most ineffective and embarrassing president.

COMMENT:  I'm glad that Pruden used the word "embarrassing," for it applies.  At first, even those of us who opposed Obama thought some good might come of the first African-American president traveling abroad and demonstrating our inclusive society.  But Obama has muffed it, and has indeed become "embarrassing."  Someone should tell him.  I nominate John McCain.

November 17, 2009