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A cordial re-union at White House

WASHINGTON: They came, they met, they drank. They did not apologise.

The much-anticipated beer summit of President Barack Obama, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department in Massachusetts took place on Thursday night, accompanied by minute-by-minute reporting from the White House press corps, countdown clocks from the cable news networks, and a last-minute addition by the White House in the form of Vice-President Joe Biden.

After 10 days of near non-stop media coverage of a case that launched a thousand news stories about race, the protagonists sat down for less than an hour at a table across from the Oval Office.

“What you had today was two gentlemen who agreed to disagree on a particular issue,” said a poised and smooth Sgt. Crowley during a 15-minute press conference after the session. “We didn’t spend too much time dwelling on the past, and we decided to look forward.” Mr. Gates said in an interview, “I don’t think anybody but Barack Obama would have thought about bringing us together.”

The two men and their families, who had accompanied them to the White House, first encountered each other in the White House library while each group was on individual tours of the White House on Thursday afternoon.

“Nobody knew what to do,” said Mr. Gates. “So I walked over, stuck out my hand and said, ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ That broke the awkwardness.”

Sgt. Crowley added that the families “had continued the tour as a group.” He described the interaction as very cordial. Mr. Gates concurred, saying: “We hit it off right from the beginning. When he’s not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy.”

By the time the two men began their meeting with Mr. Obama, they could already report progress and told the President that they had made plans to lunch together soon.

“I am thankful to Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley for joining me at the White House this evening for a friendly, thoughtful conversation,” said Mr. Obama in a statement. “Even before we sat down for the beer, I learned that the two gentlemen spent some time together listening to one another, which is a testament to them.”

The addition of Mr. Biden was interesting, for a number of reasons. Mr. Biden was able to draw on his credibility with blue-collar, labour union America and his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to add balance to the photo op that the White House presented: two African guys, two American guys, sitting around a table. Earlier in the day, Mr. Obama had razzed reporters for obsessing on the theatrics of the meeting, saying he was “fascinated with the fascination”, which has been boiling since Sgt. Crowley, responding to a call about a possible break-in, arrested Mr. Gates for disorderly conduct though he had ascertained that he was in his own home. Mr. Obama added fuel to the fire a week later when he said to a question at a news conference that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” in arresting Mr. Gates, a word choice that he later said he regretted.

“I noticed this has been called the beer summit,” said Mr. Obama. “It’s a clever term, but this is not a summit, guys. This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day and hopefully giving people an opportunity to listen to each other.” — © 2009 The New York Times News Service

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