News photos of President Barack Obama bowing to Japan's emperor have incensed critics here, who said the US leader should stand tall when representing America overseas.
Obama is in China today but the report says:
Washington's punditocracy was still weighing whether or not the US president had disgraced his country two days earlier by having taken a deep bow at the waist while meeting Japan's Emperor Akihito.
Barack Obama is shown bowing deeply to Emperor Akihito of Japan.
The photos above show other dignitaries meeting Emperor Akihito with the customary handshake.
William Kristol said, “it's not appropriate for an American president to bow to a foreign one.” Bill Bennett said, “It's ugly. I don't want to see it.”
"I'll bet if you look at pictures of world leaders over 20 years meeting the emperor in Japan, they don't bow," Kristol said.
Some said the gesture was particularly grating coming after Obama's bow to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah at a G20 meeting in April (shown in photo below).
Obama's bow in Japan seems to have grabbed much of the attention being paid to the trip.
The gesture appears to have touched a particularly raw nerve among Obama critics who said the president has hastened America's decline as a world superpower by being too apologetic and too deferential in his dealings with other world leaders.
Apologizing and bowing to world leaders diminishes the stature of the office of the President of the United States.
A picture of my cave
..
..
