He bowed. He "leaned’ or ‘dipped’ so far forward from the waist that his head was at the level of the King Abdullah’s chest. Like I said upthread, another four or five inches and he’d have been bent over 90 degrees.
So he bowed. And he’s allowing a lie by his official spokesman to the contrary to stand uncorrected. That’s where the dishonesty lies.
Still, the honesty I was referring to was in regard to Ocean Annie’s comment, which implies that Obama is coming in for unfair and politically motivated criticism for his dishonesty because so much dishonesty is tolerated when it comes to other politicians. I merely pointed out that he was being held to a higher standard because that high standard is what he chose to run on.
I neither offered you an opinion, nor can an opinion be “true.” I asked someone else a question. If you have disagreed with my opinions in the past, that’s fine, but why are you intercepting my question to another poster to say so? Do you believe the fact that you have disagreed with me in the past somehow invalidates my question to somebody else?
Do you really care if he bowed? If so, please explain why. Tell me why it would offend you so and this wouldn’t.Or this. If it’s excessive familiarity with a head of state, or too much “respect” being shown to this particular leader, I don’t think this is an issue you want to pin on Obama WRT the King of Saudi Arabia.
Is it possible that he doesn’t think it’s important enough to comment on? From the transcript posted, it seems like Gibb was speaking off the cuff and wasn’t expecting the question, since he said, “Wasn’t that meeting a week ago?” and proceeded to blunder through the conversation. Is it not possible Gibb acted alone in this, without instruction from the president to lie, and just said what he thought would be the most, um, politic? I think you’re making a big assumption when you characterize this as a lie handed down from above.
I think Obama would really be making a bigger deal out of this than it needs to be if he went out of his way to address it, since almost everyone has acknowledged that it’s not important. If Obama decided to get into it, suddenly, it IS important, it IS an issue. That would dignify the kerfuffle and make the whole thing even more absurd. Can’t you harp on more important things, like the bailout or the war?
So is your criticism politically motivated? Would you be jumping on John McCain under the same circumstances? I truly do not think you would be. You say you’re holding Obama to a higher standard. Why not hold everyone, including your own guys, to the same standard? I think you’re nitpicking and looking for reasons to find fault here. There are plenty of other, more interesting, more relevant, more important issues for you to nitpick about. This is beneath you… isn’t it?
I wasn’t trying to suggest that you don’t care about other areas of honesty. Like you said, I don’t know your motives. My comment about the President was not directed at you personally. It was meant for everyone.
I am confident the political motive for making this an issue isn’t about honesty or bowing just like the real motive to impeach Clinton wasn’t perjury or sex.
I’m okay with your president lying to you about stupid inconsequential stuff, because frankly your country has a lot of over-vocal idiots in it, egged on by profit-seeking media companies. Heck, if Obama’s trivial lies get some Americans so tizzyfied that Fox News makes a profit pandering to them, which increases the profits of News Corporation which helps ensure that I get to see more episodes of The Simpsons, then lie away, Barack.
It is unfair and politically motivated. The right wing saboteurs don’t care about lying. They only care about lying when it presents a political opportunity. The people holding Obama to an unrealistic god standard–designed to fail --are his political opponents.
Yes, I care if he bowed. I would care less if it was an isolated incident, but I’ve been growing increasingly unhappy with Obama’s behavior abroad and I explained why in the ‘Does it look like Obama bowed’ thread. It should be pretty easy to look up so I won’t try to reconstruct it here.
Two things: One, yes I think Gibb acted on his own without instruction from Obama to lie. However, he made a declarative statement, and that statement was that Obama did not bow. Now, given that he is the president’s official spokesman, if he didn’t know for sure he should either have said so, said nothing or said he’d look into it and comment then. But he didn’t. He flat out said Obama didn’t bow. And two, I never said, or even thought, that Obama handed a lie to Gibb to issue. I said clearly just above that Obama’s apparent dishonesty (which is the purpose of this thread, after all) lies in the fact that he is allowing Gibb’s statement to stand without retraction or correction.
Yes, I could ‘harp’ on more important things, but I am truly trying to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and wait until there is more concrete evidence as to how things are going to play out before I express happiness or disdain for his handling of these and other larger matters. Oddly enough, it’s the relative insignificance of this issue that causes me to feel more free to criticize it. It stands on its own and doesn’t require a wait-and-see period.
Most of my criticism of Democratic politics is indeed politically motivated, but in this case I think I can honestly say no. I truly hoped that Obama would live up to his billing. I felt that if we had to have a Democrat president anyway, I would have preferred it to be Obama as he seemed shrewd, competent and honest. My estimation of him in all three areas has been called into question considerably since he took office.
If McCain were behaving identically to Obama I would be criticizing him in the same way.
Having said that though, I can’t imagine that McCain ever would have. For one thing, he undoubtedly has more experience and a greater grasp of protocol than does Obama, and he would not be so inclined to think that obsequiousness is what the world needs to be see and hear right now from the president of the United States.
I didn’t say I was holding him to a higher standard, I said that posters to this thread (or at least I thought that was what I was saying) who are complaining about Obama’s dishonesty vs. other politicians’ dishonesty are doing so because Obama presented himself as someone who would govern according to that higher standard. It was why he said we should vote for him. You know, live by the sword, die by the sword. That kind of thing.
Answered above.
Also answered above.
Having said all that however, it’s nice to talk to you again.
I’m not a right wing ‘saboteur’. I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly. I had and continue to have high hopes for Obama. But the signs I’m seeing since he took office are not positive. He may very well be a quick study and turn all this around, but for now he’s looking somewhat Carteresque.
And I’m not holding him to an ‘unrealistic gold standard, designed to fail’; I’m holding him to standards of honesty and change that he claimed as his own and used as reasons to vote for him. Besides, I don’t think that expecting him not to allow his press secretary to lie on his behalf is an unrealistically high standard.
For all we know, Obama has scolded Gibb and told him not to do it again. Do we really need Obama at the lectern, nudging the press secretary in the back and saying “go on now, Bobby, tell America you’re sorry.”
SA, have you weighed in on the Ted Stevens case yet? Obama’s Attorney General discovered that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence at his trial. The easy thing to do would have been to keep quiet about it and let a political opponent go to jail. Holder dropped the government’s opposition to the motion for a new trial, and replaced the trial team, including officials in the public integrity section.
In ways that matter, this administration is already operating to a higher standard of integrity. We should stay vigilant to make sure it continues, but if you only look for flaws, that’s what you’ll find.
I find it more than amusing that a lot of the posters who are up in arms over this are ones who defended Bush for much greater travesties while many who are resolute in their defense of Obama attacked Bush for similar trivialities.
*Bending at the waist is NOT bowing! The sun was in his eyes!
If the president does not take time out of his schedule to call a press conference to address the issue of a single off-the-cuff misstatement by his flack, the Republic will fall!
Nonsense. If his motion is the same as a bow, then he bowed. To say “Oh, he didn’t intentionally bow. It was an accident” is simply foolish. And to say, “He just bent over. It wasn’t a bow” is spinmeistering of the highest order.
He bowed. Get over it. Even several of Obama’s ardent supporters in this thread recognized that he bowed, and they wish that Gibbs and Obama would have simply admitted it.
I think Bush’s was far more atrocious. You failed to comment on his appalling familiarity with the King of Saudi Arabia, nor his many, much more egregious faux pas when dealing with world leaders, and his lying. You were able to find ways to excuse those, or at least not nitpick on them. This is why I think you have a double standard at work.
The entirety of this simple declarative statement was the word “no.” The rest was dithering around, if you read the transcript, with some, “Well I…” and “That was last week…” And no, I don’t expect Obama to publicly correct and chastise Gibb because whether Obama bowed or not is not important to me, nor anyone else who isn’t trying to make political hay.
Then please, by all means, do, because this is just nitpicking on trivialities. This is the exact kind of thing that irritated the hell out of you when lefties did it to Bush (because he certainly gave everyone enough to work with). You don’t like it when it’s done to your guy? Don’t do it to the other guy. I know, too much to hope for.
Czarcasm and Diogenes, please stop the mental and verbal gymnastics. Your arguments sound a lot like “it depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”
The guy bowed. A five year old could see the video and know it. If you want to argue that it’s no big deal, that’s your opinion and potentially valid, but to argue that he didn’t bow is absurd and undercuts this or any other argument you choose to make.
Considering who you voted for in the previous two elections, and your railing against anything Democrat over the years, I figure any way in which Obama fails to please you can only be a *good *thing. Your political track record, no offense, sucks. There’s no indication that this has affected our political standing in any way- correcting the press release, especially at this point, would do far more damage to the administration’s reputation and you know it. I figure we’re just about due for the next outrage du jour any hour now, anyway, (although I suppose they might try to wait 'til Monday, in order to get the full week’s worth of bad press), and I fully expect you to jump on the bandwagon when it arrives. You’ve never shown yourself to care about anything other than “How can this be made to make the Dems look bad?”, so why should this situation be any different?
Saying that McCain would’ve done better is, of course, completely silly. McCain’s best foreign experience was the five years he spent in a POW camp- and that’s not the kind of foreign experience I want my President to have.
If I had claimed that any form of bending over is the same as bowing, then your inquiry would be relevant. Since I made no such claim though, your question is just petty.
The question isn’t whether any and all forms of bending over are equivalent to bowing. The question is whether Barack Obama bowed. Surely you see the difference. Even several of his ardent supporters in this thread can see that he clearly did bow, as it is blatantly obvious that he did.
