When is a bow not cause for alarm
Charles Johnson, at Little Green Footballs, has been urging less heat on the Obama bow matter because, as he and Newt both point out, Bush bowed too. I agree with Johnson that hysteria on the subject is badly placed — although I think hysteria on any subject is badly placed. Still, I do think the bow is important in that it’s one more piece in the puzzle of the cipher we elected for President. Here’s the comment I left at Little Green Footballs:
I was under the impression Bush bowed his head for the mechanical act having a medal placed on his head by a shorter man. Even if one accepts, however, that it was a true bow, (a) I don’t believe it was from the waist, which is a much deeper homage than a head/shoulder bow and (b) and this is the important one, it was George Bush doing it. I know that last sounds fatuous, given that every liberal in the world thought Bush was in love with Big Oil, but even they thought of that in purely economic terms.
No one doubted but that Bush placed America front and center — in his mind and in his world. Indeed, for the Left, this was Bush’s biggest fault.
The problem with Obama for libertarians, conservatives, moderates and good ol’ patriots, is that his every utterance shows his embarrassment about being America’s representative, his belief that America is deeply flawed, and his resolve to make America over entirely. In other words, he doesn’t much like American or what it stands for (such as liberty, individualism, capitalism, etc.).
When someone like Obama pretty much abases himself before the leader of one of the most tyrannical nations in earth, it’s more unnerving than when America’s biggest cheerleader does it. Wrong in both cases; scary only in the first.
