CFK, Obama Together In Controversial Video

This video has sparked a growing controversy in the U.S. and provided incredible fodder to conspiracy theorists and Obama skeptics who think the new president is either a) a closet Muslim; b) an apologist for American decline; or c) both.

In the video, in which a quiet and relatively reserved Cristina Fernández is seen repeatedly, Obama is shown in a closed-door meeting with other G20 presidents who gathered in London last week.

(Virtually the only social interaction Fernández has in the video comes near the end, when she is approached by her ever-present translator and interpreter. But for the most part Fernández is seen respectfully keeping to herself, self-consciously brushing her hair. Fernández doesn’t speak English, which may explain her unusually introverted behavior.)

In any case, the focus of the video – and the controversy – isn’t Fernández but Obama, who is thought by many to have bowed when meeting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. This, in the eyes of critics, is Obama’s crime. An American president bowing to a foreign king? God forbid it. The leader of a nation whose very foundation was born out of the rejection of monarchical government bowing to a king?

Though such a gesture, if it actually occurred, may strike some as silly or simply deferential, it seems to have hit some Americans the wrong way. The criticism is not entirely without warrant. After all, monarchies are in fact absurdly anachronistic and patently insulting to anyone who believes people ought to be judged by merit and conduct instead of ancestry.

Meanwhile, the gesture seems especially offensive given that this is the king of Saudi Arabia, a nation where individual liberties are often brutally suppressed. It would have been different had Obama bowed to the Queen of England, who was also in the room, not only because her monarchical status is mainly symbolic but also because she and her nation have consistently defended liberty and human rights.

The conservative magazine The Weekly Standard said that while Obama’s gesture may not have been that bad (after all, it wasn’t too long ago that former President George W. Bush was shown walking hand-in-hand with the Saudi king), it was a clear rebuke of centuries of U.S. diplomatic protocol. Wise or not, diplomatic tradition advises U.S. presidents against bowing to any foreign dignitary.

The equally conservative Washington Times was harsher, saying Obama’s apparent bow was tantamount to an act of “fealty to a Muslim king.” The Times offered this:

“Mr. Obama is proving that one can be elected president without knowing how to behave presidentially. His servile gesture was fully fitting with the tone of his humility tour of Europe. In his eagerness to be loved personally, the president has lost sight of the fact that the leader of the free world also must be respected.”

Aware of the public backlash, a White House official on Wednesday reportedly said Obama never bowed. The online news site Politico quoted the unnamed official: “It wasn’t a bow. He grasped (the king’s) hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah.”

But that seems like a somewhat dubious claim for anyone who’s seen the video. This misrepresentation of reality, if that’s what it is, may itself be a more egregious mistake than Obama’s initially innocuous greeting.

There’s no question that while greeting the king, or just milliseconds before doing so, Obama bent over to a nearly 90 degree angle. It’s hard to imagine that he would bow in such a way before anyone, even if trying to show respect. The movement is strange and doesn’t seem to make much sense. Perhaps there is an alternative explanation. It almost seems as if the president was setting something down – perhaps a gift? – before shaking the king’s hand.

Whatever the case, the “bow” aside, America’s image was thoroughly tarnished in the years before Obama took office. It’s refreshing to have a leader who is aware of this and is sagacious enough to correct it not just through seemingly insignificant gestures but through substantive differences in the way he relates with the world.

It’s unlikely that Fernández would have received a similiar level of scrutiny had she bowed to the Saudi king. Probably nobody would even have noticed. But Americans tend to be unusually sensative about such things and those who are already predisposed to question the new president – particularly those who are uncomfortable with the fact that his middle name is Huseein – will undoutedly find reason to be disturbed.

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