I've been a little hesitant to weigh in on the debate about what it means that President Obama bowed when he met Japanese Emperor Akihito. It seems that the folks who are outraged by the bow are just seizing on it as yet another outlet for an increasingly unhinged disdain for anything and everything the president does. Those who aren't imbuing the bow with earth-shattering meaning don't care enough to offer a passionate defense of it. They're just shrugging their shoulders and moving on.
I'm in the camp that doesn't think the bow is such a big deal, which is why I haven't written about it earlier. Obama isn't the first president to bow before a foreign dignitary: Bill Clinton also bowed to Akihito; Nixon bowed to his father, Emperor Showa (also known as Hirohito), and Eisenhower bowed to French President Charles de Gaulle. None of these events precipitated a catastrophic collapse of American power abroad, and neither will Obama's. A president can be both respectful and powerful at once. Why should power be demonstrated by lack of polite observance of traditions or disregard for, as Donna Brazile put it on CNN, gestures of kindness and goodwill? Is America's place in the world really so fragile that a bow to an aging emperor─of a country the United States largely has good relations with─risks jeopardizing it? I don't think so.
A debate of the direction of America's foreign policy is an entirely legitimate one. Some critics believe that showing too much deference to international leaders is an admission of weakness, and that's a discussion worth engaging in. But it's a conversation that should revolve around concrete decisions and policies, not a simple greeting to a monarch whose contemporary political duties are largely symbolic. Outrage over that is contrived and unhelpful, only serving makes America look like a weaker country than the act itself.
**UPDATE** David Sanger provides some interesting context on presidential bows.
