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What he was referring to was the photograph of President Obama bending to nearly a 90-degree angle when he greeted Emperor Akihito during his visit to Japan on November 13. It was the bow that caused a noisy debate in the US, both from the left, the right, and even from the middle. It may be a bow that will be played over and over during the next election campaign, not unlike the photograph of former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis in a helmet sitting atop a tank. That image made Dukakis look like a squirrel, and it might have cost him the presidency.

"Treasonous"; "Idiot-in-chief"; "Shocking display of fealty to a foreign potentate"; "How low will he go?"; "Undignified,"; "A first-year English teacher trying to impress with Karate Kid-level knowledge of Japanese custom," were among the harsh headlines and comments in the American press and the blogosphere on the president's bow.

Watching the video of Obama bowing not once, but at least three times, one could say it was an "awkward" gesture. This may be due in part to the difference in height between the president, who is over six feet tall, and the diminutive emperor. The image can be described as strange because the president and the emperor were shaking hands at the same time that the president was bowing. Normally, the two gestures are mutually exclusive.

It was apparent that President Obama was attempting to show respect to a foreign culture as well as renewed American humility - two traits that disappeared during the eight-year reign of his predecessor. He may have overdone it with his handshake-forward lurch-repeated bowing combination, or acted the wrong way in terms of physical tone, but what is the big deal about President Obama showing respect to a royal personage?

When I lived in the US, I was told by many American friends that Americans do not bow and do not curtsy to any dignitaries. Such custom is regarded as a gesture of American independence and a complete break from its past as a British colony.

But President Obama is not the first US president to bow to a foreign dignitary. President Nixon, in his meeting with Emperor Hirohito in 1971 in Alaska, bowed to the emperor and the empress, whom he called "Their Imperial Majesties". Nixon, unlike Obama, may have got the physical tone correct and appropriate - a slight arch from the waist with hands at his side - but bow he did.

President Bill Clinton, when he welcomed the Japanese emperor at the White House, slightly inclined his head in a rather noncommittal semi-bow, but it was still a bow by any means.

It is quite telling that the staunchest defenders of Obama are mostly non-American. They perceive the president's gesture as a welcome change in American attitude towards the world. One blogger wrote: "I am not an American, but if you call your president an idiot, I may as well help you call him an imbecile. A proverb in Africa says that 'If you offer your kin for a dime, nobody will bid a dollar to buy him'. When you show so much bile and disrespect for the president of your country, you lose your respect as a people too. Keep dragging him in the mud and think that the world will adorn him with pearls. If the writers of the constitution knew that America would get to this level, they would have thought twice before drafting the First Amendment."

That sums it up neatly for most people who can maintain their objectivity about the relative importance of things and the overwhelming tasks that President Obama needed to achieve during his Asian visit.

It goes without saying that Obama wants to send a clear signal to leaders in the Pacific region - whose importance and clout on the world stage is rising - that America is an integral part of the region, and it will behave in a way that it no longer so condescending or imperialistic. While it may be true that this kind of state visit is mainly about making symbolic gestures, it always carries some impact regardless. The president and the American administration know that America's engagement in the region is critical to its future and that of the world. Secretary of State Clinton's signing of the US-Asean Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in July, after years of failed attempts by Asean, provided a case in point.

Japan - the cornerstone of America's Asian alliance - is in the midst of an unsettling political and economic state of affairs. When the new prime minister likened his role to that of a "conductor of a pickup orchestra" trying to achieve "harmony," one needed to heed the sign of danger. His cabinet members are fighting openly. One even appears to be defiantly running an alternative government. This is against the backdrop of staggering gross national debt that runs at 180 per cent of GDP. Some analysts warn this could rise to 300 per cent in ten years if the country's economic problems are not effectively addressed. At the same time, the call for the US to move the entire Marine base in Okinawa to Guam - the position taken by Prime Minister Hatoyama himself during the campaign - has been resonating.

China represents a larger headache for the US. The issues to be ironed out range from greenhouse gas emissions to human rights to security to the economic and financial crisis. Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times recently, entitled "World Out of Balance", saying that the pegging of China's currency to the precipitously falling dollar could cause a more serious world trade imbalance, skyrocketing US unemployment, and out-of-control protectionism that could eventually lead to a calamitous collapse of world trade. And in 2010, China will launch its first aircraft carriers, while still piling up more weapons, which will in effect change the security configuration in the region and beyond.

The Obama administration is now calling China its "strategic partner" as opposed to George W Bush's "strategic competitor" - but there is a long way to go before both countries end their mutual suspicion.

So, all things considered, all the fretting about President's Obama's bow is perhaps too much ado about nothing. To borrow from the title of a book by an American writer, Richard Carlson (1961-2006): "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff."