Bows, Lies and Videotape

The White House head of protocol or maybe the social secretary will have to tell you whether or not it is proper for the president of the United States to bow to a monarch of another country. Or maybe the experts at the State Department who’ve proven so adept at the whole protocol thing could shed some light on the situation.

It doesn’t seem right to this humble blogger for POTUS to bow to another head of state, but leave that to the experts. There is a topic, however, that I happen to know a bit about, and that is communications and media relations. And in this one, the White House has allowed itself to be tripped up by a Joe Biden-sized whopper.

When meeting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the recent G-20 in England, President Obama bowed rather deeply as he was greeting the monarch. After criticism emerged in the following days of such an odd occurrence, the White House attempted to back off from the fairly obvious gaffe by claiming the president is taller than the king (true) and he bent over to grasp the king’s hand with both hands (not true). Here’s the transcript from yesterday’s White House briefing:

[CNN’s Dan] LOTHIAN: When the President met with King Abdullah, there was something that took place which I believe the White House explained was just the president being taller than the king. We took a look at the video, and it does appear that the president actually bowed to King Abdullah. Did he bow or didn’t he?
[White House press secretary] GIBBS: No, I think he bent over with both, to shake — with both hands to shake his hand, so I don’t —

As the age-old PR saying goes, it’s not the crime. It’s the cover-up.

This is one of the most obvious, easy-to-uncover prevarications (I had to try hard to come up with a word that wasn’t “lie”) that has been told from the White House since Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman … Monica Lewinski.”

Just look at the video. Hit stop at 3 seconds. Look at the president’s left hand. Hit play. Quick — hit stop again at 5 seconds. Look for his hand now. Note the president’s posture. Now do it again.

As clearly as you could ever want to see, the president grasps King Abdullah’s hand with ONE hand (his right) and rests his left hand/wrist on his knee (perhaps to help him bow so low?). Then AFTER Obama stands up, he extends his left hand and does what Gibbs describes as using “both hands to shake his hand.”

Bingo. Caught in what the first President Bush called “deep doo-doo.”

Now, as soon as the White House is sure they are caught and when it shows in their polling they will begin to attack conservatives for caring about something so insignificant as a bow. But they will refuse to admit they completely misled about the snafu. The question is why lie about something so small and so easy to get proven wrong on?

Transparency indeed.