(WSJ).President Barack Obama hoisted a beer with a white policeman and a black professor Thursday evening, aiming to cool a dispute between the pair that ignited a national debate and threatened to damage his reputation as a politician whose appeal transcends race. Speaking in the Oval Office earlier Thursday, Mr. Obama said he was "fascinated with the fascination about this evening," calling the meeting "so hyped and so symbolic."
The White House billed the meeting as a "teachable moment" occasioned by the July 16 arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley after a confrontation between the two men. The incident, and the president's public comment that police "acted stupidly" in arresting his friend Mr. Gates, placed Mr. Obama squarely in the middle of a dialogue about racial profiling and police power that spread from the Ivy League enclave across the nation. The president later said he regretted his offhand words. The White House was clearly hoping Thursday's beer -- originally suggested by Sgt. Crowley after Mr. Obama called him to discuss the incident -- would end the fracas. The affair has occupied time the administration needs to make headway on a health-care revamp, climate-change legislation and financial-industry regulation before Congress begins its monthlong August recess.
The White House billed the meeting as a "teachable moment" occasioned by the July 16 arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley after a confrontation between the two men. The incident, and the president's public comment that police "acted stupidly" in arresting his friend Mr. Gates, placed Mr. Obama squarely in the middle of a dialogue about racial profiling and police power that spread from the Ivy League enclave across the nation. The president later said he regretted his offhand words. The White House was clearly hoping Thursday's beer -- originally suggested by Sgt. Crowley after Mr. Obama called him to discuss the incident -- would end the fracas. The affair has occupied time the administration needs to make headway on a health-care revamp, climate-change legislation and financial-industry regulation before Congress begins its monthlong August recess.
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