Politico, Whitehouse.gov, Huffington Post, The Root, MSNBC, Washington Post----(Did Race Relations "Healing Moment" pass us by? MSNBC reports.)(Pres. Obama speaks to citizens about why he thinks Prof. Gates and Cambridge Police Dept. should use this incident to spark a long awaited conversation about Race Relations.)(AG on race: America is a "Nation of cowards". Watch Attorney General Eric Holder's speech at a Department of Justice Black History Month program.)
With two phone calls and a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room Friday, President Obama attempted to recast his role in the debate over Monday’s arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. by the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department.
Obama phoned both Gates and James Crowley, the police sergeant who arrested Gates, inviting them to the White House for what could be a made-for-television event advancing a narrative of racial reconciliation.
And in remarks to the White House press corps, the president responded to outcry over his charge that Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” in their handling of Gates’ arrests. Obama acknowledged that he "gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically," conceding he might have "calibrated those words differently."
But the larger question for Obama going forward is whether the week’s events have recast something far more fundamental in the public mind – Obama’s persona as a post-racial leader, a president who offered himself to voters as a figure of racial reconciliation.
That image was put to the test for the first time by the April 2008 blow-up over Obama’s fiery former pastor, the Rev. Jerermiah Wright. Now, some expect Obama to return to a more cautious posture when it comes to talk of race – or risk a backlash from white voters.
“He's got to be racially nuanced from now on. That’s what he's learned from this," said Ronald Walters, a University of Maryland political science professor who ran Rev. Jesse Jackson's campaigns for the presidency. "His recent statement [Friday] was calibrated to bring him back to where he was, especially with whites, and they appreciated that he leveled the playing field."
Walters predicted Obama would even get a gauzy, feel-good moment out of the incident if Gates and Crowley visit the White House – where Obama suggested the three might get together to have a beer.
"They will get together and have a beer in the White House and have a Kumbaya moment. And that will be the end of it," he said."
For a president who has occupied his historic role as the first black president with caution, the comment at Wednesday's presser was an unusually direct engagement with issues of race – and came at a particularly bad time for Obama, derailing what he’d hoped would be his most direct pitch for his health care plan yet. And for a politician who has benefited from his critics' ineptitude with racial language – such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's description of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a "Latina woman racist" – Obama's comments struck an uncharacteristically polarizing note.
Republican pollster Whit Ayres said Obama played his cards Friday right by reaching out to Crowley and responding to a spiraling dispute that was "not consistent with the image of a post-racial America and a post-racial president."
"We all say things that we wish we hadn't said and wouldn't have said if we thought a few minutes beforehand," Ayres said. "If he apologized to the officer for maligning his intelligence and basically said he made a mistake, then that's about all you can do."
The president, however, did not disavow the entirety of his comments on Gates's arrest. Though he massaged some of his specific word choices, Obama stuck by the core of his reaction to the incident in Cambridge, saying he still believes "that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home, to the station."
And neither Obama nor his press secretary went so far as to issue a direct and literal apology. Pressed as to whether the president was apologizing for his comments, Gibbs was evasive: "If the president doesn't want to characterize it in a conversation he's having with you all, I'm not going to get ahead of him."
In his turn at the White House podium, Obama also rejected one common criticism of his Wednesday remarks: that, as the president, he should not have waded into an essentially local issue. Instead, he presented himself as a helpful contributor to debates about race.
"Race is still a troubling aspect of our society," Obama said. "Whether I were black or white, I think that me commenting on this and hopefully contributing to constructive, as opposed to negative, understandings about the issue is part of my portfolio."
If this is the role Obama chooses to embrace, going forward, it's one that comes naturally to him, said Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas, Austin
"Part of his appeal is the authenticity with which he comes across in that role," Buchanan said. "I think this will ultimately be a blip on the screen, instead of a sudden branding of him as a covert advocate of African American issues in a stronger sense than we had previously thought."
Added Democratic strategist Steve Jarding: “It may just be that in the course of the campaign, Barack Obama was running as candidate for change in era where America was hurting. To his credit, his position was ‘this isn’t about a black man or white man.’ He kept to a big picture.”
“In this case, it’s a very specific incident. It would’ve been interesting in a campaign if it happened then as opposed to now. I’ve got to wonder at a gut level if it would’ve been the same,” Jarding said. “He may be the post-racial President, but by God, when racism and discrimination occurs, we ought to say that’s wrong,” he said.
Still, Walters warned there's one constituency that might not be pleased by the president's backtracking – black voters.
Perhaps it’s evidence of the polarizing nature of race of America that whatever unease white voters felt about Obama’s comments, some black voters were clearly delighted that Obama was finally saying some of the things they had long felt.
"What it says is that when it comes to race he will do what he did with the Rev. Wright situation and try to split the difference," Walters said. “That is not good news for black people."
Obama sounded a softer note on the altercation between the prominent African American Studies professor and the local cop, suggesting greater sensitivity on all sides could have taken the edge off a tense situation.
"What I'd like to do then is make sure that everybody steps back for a moment, recognizes that these are two decent people," Obama told the press. "But, as I said at the press conference, be mindful of the fact that because of our history…African Americans are sensitive to these issues."
The president's surprise appearance in the briefing room was a shock to reporters, who just hours before were told by spokesman Robert Gibbs that Obama had already "said what he's going to say on this."
Obama hinted at one motivation behind this reversal in his remarks to the press, pointing out that the uproar over his comment on Gates during his Wednesday news conference had virtually drowned out the message on health care he had been attempting to deliver that night.
"Over the last two days, as we've discussed this issue, I don't know if you've noticed, but nobody's been paying much attention to Health Care," Obama said Friday. "I will not use this time to spend more words on Health Care, although I can't guarantee that, that will be true next week."View Larger MapSources: Politico, MSNBC, Washington Post, Whitehouse.gov, Google Maps
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