WASHINGTON — It started out as a casual suggestion: three guys working out their differences over a beer. But President Obama's offer to play host to the cop and the professor entangled in a debate over racial profiling now carries the imprimatur of high-level diplomacy.
White House aides are downplaying expectations that the beer summit that Obama suggested last week will produce a resolution.
It's set for Thursday, an administration official confirmed Monday night. Both Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. have agreed to come. That means Obama is on the hook to achieve some kind of agreement.
Bilateral get-togethers between Obama and a host of foreign leaders in recent months have gotten less attention. The image of the president trying to use a beer-drinking session to mediate an ages-old, highly volatile dispute has given new definition to diplomatic mission.
Obama offended Cambridge police when he said that they had acted "stupidly" in arresting the professor on a charge of disorderly conduct at his home July 16 after a reported possible break-in. Gates and Crowley have left open the prospect of suing one another. And none of the three has apologized, although Obama came close last week when he said his choice of words was poor.
What does the president expect from the meeting? White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in an interview that it might be the first step toward a rapprochement.
"A lot of this is going to happen between them [Gates and Crowley], without the president, going forward," Gibbs said. "You had a situation where, for whatever reason, both individuals couldn't step back. And at least this will provide an opportunity to show people that that's possible -- and hopefully start a bigger dialogue."
The beer summit will be monitored closely. Many black leaders believe Obama was on target with his initial comments. They don't want the moment to pass without a fuller discussion of racial profiling.
"His first response was appropriate, which was that the police officer's behavior was stupid, not that the officer was stupid," said Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.
