Obama's critics should be bowing their heads.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

To most reasonable people, it was a well-intentioned show of respect to a head of state who greeted his guest on the steps of his home before ushering him inside for lunch.

But Barack Obama's greeting to Japan's emperor, Akihito, at the weekend has worked the American right into a lather over what they see as their president's unseemly deference to a symbol of hereditary power.

The outrage was initially confined to commentators such as William Kristol, who, in an interview with Fox News on Sunday, wondered "why President Obama thought that was appropriate. Maybe he thought it would play well in Japan."

Now no less a …