Stop That Cop! Well--Maybe Not

Yesterday I wrote a column discussing the Henry Louis Gates Jr. flap in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cop checks out burglary. Unidentified man inside the residence refuses to talk to cop, calls cop a racist, then goes ballistic on the front porch when he finally steps outside to identify himself and continue the racial rant. Cop arrests man for disorderly conduct. At a press conference on health care, President Obama takes a question about the Cambridge incident, and all hell breaks loose afterwards.


What a difference a day (or two) makes. The Obama machine is in turbospin cycle. Obama himself has been surrounded so long by "yes" men that it never occurred to him that he could make a remark that wouldn't bring oohs and aahs from a grateful American public. The President has learned, much to his chagrin, that being the first "post-racial" President doesn't include stirring up racial animosity and taking sides in an issue about which he knew next-to-nothing.

Obama has issued the standard liberal non-apology apology. He never admits he was just plain wrong in what he did (messiahs can't be wrong, can they?). It boils down to "I'm sorry you ignorant fools didn't understand that when I touted a black out-of-control suspect over a white police officer who was just doing his job I was simply asking everyone to be more sensitive." In other words, he admitted that he hadn't articulated his message as brilliantly as usual, but the sum and substance of it was right. I'm not mollified, and I'm not alone.

Said Obama, "This has been ratcheting up, and I obviously helped to contribute to ratcheting it up. I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think, I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police and Sergeant Crowley specifically. And I could've calibrated those words differently." Not good enough, Mr. President. You managed to take a minor kerfuffle and turn it into a national standoff. Had you kept your big mouth shut, this would all have gone away with most of the participants feeling a little foolish and a little wiser.

It didn't help Obama's cause that a few hours prior to his surprise appearance in the White House briefing room, a very multiracial group of Cambridge and Harvard police officers stood together and publicly demanded that Obama apologize to Sergeant Crowley. He had so badly misjudged his earlier remarks, that it has turned into another nail in his "health care before the August recess" coffin. The officers also demanded an apology from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who added fuel to the fire.

In the spirit of silly equivalency, Obama attempted to stem the rising anger by backpedaling and saying now that "both sides overreacted during the incident." How so, Mr. President? Give us some specifics. And didn't you make the big boo-boo of taking one of those sides in a national address? So far, we have a self-important black professor deciding that the police had no right to investigate a reported break-in at his own house, thereby providing him with the opportunity to go on a loud and public rant about racist cops. To go with that, we have a white cop who calmly and reasonably asked simple questions which would have resolved the whole misunderstanding quickly and privately.

Gates demanded to know why he should have to identify himself. "Why, because I'm a black man in America?" Answer: "No, it's because you're an unidentified man in the house where there has been a reported break-in." I would have added "you moron," but Sergeant Gates was far more diplomatic and professional.

So the President decided it was time to mend fences, and get down with the common folks. He called Sergeant Crowley to explain (not to apologize). He joked about how big the controversy had become (yeah, very funny, sir), and then asked Crowley if there was anything he could do for Crowley. My answer would have been, "Well, Mr. President, you could resign soon." But Crowley simply asked if the President could get the news reporters off his lawn. Although Obama believes he is entitled to control every facet of every American's life, he admitted he couldn't get the reporters off Crowley's lawn. In fact, he said he couldn't get the reporters off his own lawn (if by "his" he meant the White House lawn).

Obama then told the press that he believed the arresting officer was a good man and invited him and the professor to the White House for a beer. Sergeant Crowley would probably enjoy having a brew in the White House, but I'm sure Professor Gates would much prefer a French pinot noir (as opposed to his earlier American whine).

Continuing to soft-pedal his gaffe, Obama said, "The fact that this has garnered so much attention, I think, is testimony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sensitive here in America." Mr. President, that's called picking at a scab--it will never heal. Just ask your friends Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright. If the wound ever heals, what will you have to talk about? At least you didn't call the black officer who assisted in the arrest an "Oreo."

Apparently Obama had also missed a couple of other tidbits about Sergeant Crowley. Crowley is in charge of the Cambridge Police racial sensitivity training, putting special emphasis on proper behavior for officers when the officers are white and the person of interest belongs to a minority group. He has deplored racial profiling. Even more significant, Crowley was the officer who in 1993 rushed onto the basketball court to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to black Celtics player Reggie Lewis who collapsed at practice. Some racist.

Obama sums it all up by saying, "My sense is you've got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in a way that it should have been resolved." Had the President said that at the original press conference, it's likely the situation would have gone away on its own. And now some reports (unconfirmed) suggest that Obama had actually invited the question about the incident so that he could give exactly the response that subsequently blew up in his face.

Although this incident by itself is not going to bring the Obama presidency down, it is indicative of the awakening of the American people to the kind of man they really elected, not the one that too many thought they had elected. He's not post-racial at all, but they're also discovering that he is an arrogant promoter of government in every corner of the economy and government regulation of just about everything of any importance in the lives of every American.

Today, two polls showed the results of that awakening. For the first time, the President's popularity has slipped below the 50% mark (49% to 51%). Although 83% of likely Democratic voters still support him, it's not enough to overcome the negatives with Republicans and independents. Of the last twelve Presidents, only two have slipped below 50% at this point in their first presidencies (Clinton and Bush II were both lower, but Clinton didn't get a majority of the vote in the first place, and Bush actually lost the popular vote, so the drop for Obama is particularly significant). By slipping to 49%, Obama is losing the votes that put him in the White House--independents and cross-over Republicans. Only the awful events of 9/11 restored Bush's popularity, and then only temporarily. And unlike Clinton, the likelihood of a Republican sweep in the off-year election which brings the economy back to health is fairly slim. Obama is beginning, for the first time, to look like a one-termer.