Quote of the Day: On Barack Obama’s Bow
Our political/diplomatic Quote of the Day comes via Professor John Brown’s must-read Public Diplomacy and Press Blog – where he points us to a post by Steven W. Lewis on the Baker Institute Blog dealing with President Barack Obama’s bow to the Japanese Emperor.
This bow became the target of (what else?) a political controversy in the United States where Obama’s critics accused him of displaying weakness, deferring too much to an Emperor, displaying incompetent diplomacy. Etc. Lewis adds this:
Obama’s bow to the Japanese emperor, his handshake with Myanmar’s prime minister at the APEC conclave in Singapore, and his town hall meeting with university students in Shanghai are exhibits A, B and C, according to this analysis.
A bow and a handshake are unlikely to inspire either the Japanese or Myanmar military to invade the U.S. anytime in the foreseeable future. But by focusing on President Obama’s town hall in Shanghai, American hawks may have, inadvertently, stumbled upon what is in truth a serious concern: Chinese students. They may sport trendy eyeglasses, wear day-glo sweaters and carry Hello Kitty notebooks, but in fact they constitute one of the most destructive political forces in recent history. … Nobody today can say exactly how the American and the Chinese people may come to trust each other such that they both cut back on the ways they waste energy and foul the environment. But it is clear that such trust will require a sustained conversation between Americans and Chinese, something a 48-year-old American president is both capable of initiating and maintaining: The young Chinese in the room must have known this intuitively. And it is also clear that such a conversation should begin with a smile, and that smile should not be met with derisive laughter. So far, so good. “
6 Responses to “Quote of the Day: On Barack Obama’s Bow”
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Perhaps the Right would have approved of President Obama trying to give the Emperor a relaxing shoulder rub. Invading his personal space and all that sends just the right message.
The critics are making too big a deal of this. He might have broken some arcane protocol rules, but it's ridiculous to make a big deal of this. Much more important is how deferential or worse, apologetic he may have been to excess with the Chinese (and to what extent it reflects anti-Bush far-left pathology). More important still is that he is forced to be deferential, because he and his people have misspent and borrowed far more than Bush or other predecessors, and we're now in hock to and dependent on China to buy our debt as well as boost our currency (and we expect it to stop manipulating theirs?).
Not a huge deal, but it is surprising that he would make the same blunder multiple times, after poor Robert Gibbs tried so hard to lie and coverup the first one to the Saudi Prince.
I believe that was the King of Saudi Arabia.
“it is surprising that he would make the same blunder multiple times”
Well, this is the same guy who's chosen to take the lib Dems' side in pursuit of bad legislation this year.
This (legislation effort) is not a fluke, it seems (unfortunately).