Barack Obama, a Picture and a Bow are Worth a Thousand Words … An Image of a Bowing a Lasting Legacy

The Bow has become the Presidential image of Barack Obama …

Barack Obama knows that image is everything. The One also knows that perception is every thing in the political and media world. This is how Obama won the Presidency. It was not on policy, his credentials or anything that he had done as a politicians as he had accomplished nothing in his career. Obama was elected on a fabricated image and the perception that he was a moderate that would bridge the gap and reach across the aisle to Republicans. 

The image of bowing to others is that one can never lead, only follow

Yet, for some reason Barack Hussein Obama and his handlers have seen fit to destroy that moderate image and the lasting image has been one that he bows down to others over and over and over again. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a bow worth? Can you say a legacy and a lasting image that no President of the United States should ever want.

Peggy Noonan pens a brutal and frank essay of Barack Obama and his bows, “He Can’t Take Another Bow: An icon of a White House that is coming to seem amateurish.’

He added that rather than bowing to emperors—Mr. Obama “seems to do this stuff spontaneously and inexplicably”—he should begin to bow to “the voices of experience” in Washington.

When longtime political observers start calling for wise men, a president is in trouble.

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Mr Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The common wisdom that he can’t afford to lose is exactly wrong—he can’t afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind him, vow to fight another day, and move on. Afghanistan hangs over him, threatening the unity of his own Democratic congressional base. There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Obama’s rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demand baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.

Which gets us back to the bow.

President Gerald Ford slips and falls as he leaves Air Force One upon arrival in Vienna, Austria for a state visit in 1975

In a presidency, a picture or photograph becomes iconic only when it seems to express something people already think. When Gerald Ford was spoofed for being physically clumsy, it took off. The picture of Ford losing his footing and tumbling as he came down the steps of Air Force One became a symbol. There was a reason, and it wasn’t that he was physically clumsy. He was not only coordinated but graceful. He’d been a football star at the University of Michigan and was offered contracts by the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.

But the picture took off because it expressed the growing public view that Ford’s policies were bumbling and stumbling. The picture was iconic of a growing political perception.

The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren’t playing off a growing perception. If the pictures had been accompanied by headlines from Asia saying “Tough Talks Yield Big Progress” or “Obama Shows Muscle in China,” the bowing pictures might be understood this way: “He Stoops to Conquer: Canny Obama shows elaborate deference while he subtly, toughly, quietly advances his nation’s interests.”

Some think a lack of leadership in the healthcare debate by Obama is a positive. I would beg to differ. There is a reason why the socialized healthcare plan, referred to as the government take over of healthcare insurance is called Obamacare. Sorry folks, Obama and this terrible piece of legislation has been branded. The more American people learn of this plan, the more they are against it. The fact that Obama has showed no leadership in healthcare is not a chance for triangulation, ala Bill Clinton, it will represent a complete and total failure of what was supposed to be the crowned jewel of Obama’s administration. Obama has passed the buck on healthcare, allowed AG Holder to make the call on 911 terrorist being tried in NYC and dithered on Afghanistan. No matter how you spin it, Obama has shown that he cannot lead.