Right after swearing to uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, what a President of the United States should know is that he never bows, scrapes, kneels, genuflects, or otherwise shows subservience of any kind to any foreign leader because too many men and women died so that he wouldn’t have to put himself in that position. It’s why the US doesn’t lower its flag at the opening ceremony of the Olympics either. So when US President Barack Obama did his embarrassing 90-degree bend-over (good thing he was facing forward) to Japanese Emperor Akihito – whose father, Emperor Hirohito, unleashed the attack on Pearl Harbor, a place where the remains of many of the 1,177 sailors killed when their ship, the USS Arizona, was sunk, still lies beneath the waters, and where oil still rises to the surface - it must have been a kick in the face to the few World War II veterans still alive. But this bow wasn’t about WWII or Japan, or – as the White House tried to spin like a top gone awry – political and cultural protocol. It was about an American President Standing Tall and refusing to bend to anyone, much the same way the Spartan King Leonidas did at Thermopylae in 480 B.C. when he wouldn’t acquiesce to that demand from the Persian King Xerxes.
 State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters the bow was “a sign of respect to the emperor,” but it was really a sign of disrespect for the US Presidency, an office former US president Bill Clinton liked to sully with his sexual shenanigans, but which should be sacrosanct. This isn’t the first time Obama lowered himself, and his office. He bowed to Saudi King Abdullah in April, prompting The Washington Times to editorialize it as a “shocking display of fealty.”
It was a different time, but US General Douglas MacArthur, after WWII, when the US let Hirohito keep his office, knew what pose to adopt when they met. MacArthur, as was his wont, put his hands on his hips, in a show of obvious contempt because that’s what he felt. There was no need for any of that between Obama and Emperor Akihito, but Obama should never have allowed himself to taint his office, and it’s too late for him to try to explain what he did because the picture is out there, the same way Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis never could live down the sight of himseft  in a tank during the 1988 US Presidential campaign, an image that ended his hopes right there. Obama may have thought he was scoring some points with Japan, but he was losing them back home where the voters are, except from his predictable apologists who wouldn’t mind if he kissed someone’s rear end either, a position they seem to prefer.
Let European leaders bow and bend over, not American Presidents, although Obama’s faux pas wasn’t quite as humiliating as then US President Richard Nixon’s bow to Akihito’s father in Japan in 1971, And Clinton in 1997 barely escaped the same fate when he started to bow to Akihito, an image the New York Times said was of “an obsequient president and the Emperor of Japan.” There’s no reason Emperor Akihito shouldn’t be shown the respect of his position, but you do that with a handshake, the way men do to each other. If you follow the White House dance on it, Obama should kiss US French President Nicolas Sarkozy too, because that’s what the French and Europeans like, sometimes even standing up. 
     

Andy@Neurope.eu