TheSequitur.com Editorial Board
May 20, 2007

Many Americans share the feeling that when the leader of our country looks like an imbecile, so do we.When Queen Elizabeth began her stateside tour more than a week ago, the American public waited with baited breath to see how President Bush would make a fool of himself in front of the dignitary. At least, that's what the popular media would have you believe. Coverage of the event has been as unavoidable as the social faux pas we've come to expect from our current leader.

There was plenty to cover. After all, Americans aren't experts on the social etiquette expected when addressing members of a monarchy we threw out of our country more than two hundred years ago. Though we justly expect the leaders of our nation to better understand such rules than regular Joes, it is also to be expected that mistakes will be made. What isn't expected is just how much those mistakes are covered by the media, which mulls them over and over until all we know about what happened in the world last week is that President Bush winked at the Queen.

Yes, Bush almost said that the Queen was here during 1776. It is obvious it was a mistake, as he was overtly remarking about her attendance at the bicentennial in 1976. As if that wasn't enough for the media to take hold of, he then turned and winked at the Queen jokingly, which is apparently not the way one is supposed to act towards royalty. The media coverage of the interaction was been overblown both here in the United States as well as by our friends across the pond.

Many Americans share the feeling that when the leader of our country looks like an imbecile, so do we. In fact, with the current record of social idiocy on Bush's score chart, our distaste for such blunders has turned into the expectation that they will happen. We expect that Bush will make an off-color joke to the Saudi Crown Prince. We expect that he'll bow when he's not supposed to and not bow when he should while visiting Asia. And while the country looks on with a mix of shock, humor and shame, it doesn't mean that the American people think that such blunders are worthy of around the clock media coverage.

[W]hen it comes to the mistakes made by President Bush, there are much more important ones from which he should learn.The President made what many people consider a mistake when interacting with a member of the British monarchy. It isn't the first time a president, past or present, has made such a mistake, and it will not be the last. (It should be noted that some think Bush’s misspeaking is purposeful - we do not address that today.) As we live in an age when weekend getaways to foreign lands are a reality, it's reasonable to expect that there will be some uncomfortable moments when people stumble over unfamiliar social customs. And while we should hold our leaders to a higher standard when it comes to knowledge about those they interact with, it doesn't mean we should demonize every mistake that is made. All we can ask is that they, like the rest of us, do the best to learn from those mistakes.

However, we think that most of us can admit that, when it comes to the mistakes made by President Bush, there are much more important ones from which he should learn.