Which is to say, you do as the Romans. Or the Austrians (who speak German, not Austrian, Mr. President). That doesn't mean we compromise our own values in the process. Hence Rule No. 1: Americans don't bow to monarchs.

I've now watched the tape of Obama's bow a dozen or more times. It is simply not possible to accept an anonymous White House official's insistence that Obama was merely reaching down to take the king's hand and had to bend over because of the height difference.

Not to name drop, but I've met the king and I've met the president. We're not talking Gulliver and the Lilliputians. Even if Obama needed to reach down for the king's hand, why not let the king raise his hand of his own volition? When I shook hands with the king, he seemed to know what to do.

To any objective observer, Obama's bend from the waist quacked like a duck. It was ... a bow. Clumsy, embarrassing and unbecoming a president, yes, but not an act of treason or, as one newspaper put it, a gesture of "fealty to a foreign potentate."

Obama was probably trying to be respectful and, it appears, may even have lost his balance a little. On a bright note, he didn't throw up on the king, as George H.W. Bush managed to do upon Japan's prime minister's lap during dinner. Quite the unfortunate little mess, that.

We elect presidents for a variety of reasons, though not usually for their aristocratic bearings. And few of them are presidential out of the starting gate.

We are, alas, commoners, one and all. And proud of it, apparently. Our forefathers, moreover, spilled blood so that we wouldn't have to bow to kings and queens.

So it is. And, one hopes, shall ever be.

In the meantime, given the season of second chances, we might grant the Obamas a little slack. We might also nudge them to clean house, politely of course, and invite Ms. Baldrige to tea.