WASHINGTON — President Obama sat down for a beer this afternoon with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge cop James Crowley.
PHOTOS: Obama, Gates, Crowley, Biden Share a Beer
Vice President Biden joined the group after an invitation from the president this afternoon.
With Obama and Biden in shirt sleeves and Gates and Crowley in their suit jackets, the four sipped beer from mugs in the White House Rose Garden. The president drank Bud Light, the vice president Bucklers, Gates Sam Adams Light and Crowley Blue Moon.
Pretzels and peanuts also were on the table.
Afterward, Obama said the meeting featured “friendly, thoughtful conversation.
In a statement, the president said he learned that Gates and Crowley had already spent some time talking with each other. He called that “a testament to them.”
Said Obama: “I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart. I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode.”
Crowley spoke afterward, saying there was no tension and that the discussions were “cordial and productive.”
Crowley said he and Gates planned to meet again and that they both agreed to “look forward rather than backward.”
Crowley said his family bumped into Gates’ family while on separate tours of the White House and then continued together.
Before the gathering started, Obama portrayed his much-anticipated chat as nothing more than “an opportunity to listen to each other.”
“I noticed this has been called the ‘Beer Summit.’ It’s a clever term, but this is not a summit, guys,” Obama told reporters ahead of the gathering.
“This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day, and hopefully giving people an opportunity to listen to each other,” the president said. “And that’s really all it is. This is not a university seminar.”
Obama had beer — that all-American bonding gesture — with the two men he joined last week at the center of an uproar over race in America.
After Crowley investigated a potential burglary at Gates’ house — and ended up arresting the protesting professor for disorderly conduct — the episode exploded into a national debate on racial profiling. Obama added fuel to the fire when he declared in a prime-time news conference that the police “acted stupidly.” The charge against Gates was later dropped.
There’s been a political cost for the president, stealing attention from his agenda and drawing negative public reviews on how he handled the matter.
“I am, I have to say, fascinated by the fascination about this evening,” Obama said. He described it as some personal conversation among people who are imperfect, and he included himself in that.
“Hopefully, instead of ginning up anger and hyperbole everybody can just spend a little bit of time with some self-reflection and recognizing that other people have different points of view,” Obama said. “And that’s it.”
Crowley told Boston TV station WHDH that he hoped for a meaningful discussion with the president and then a quick return to his job.
“Right now I just want to get back to work, get back to doing what it is I do, get back to being a dad to my three children,” he said at an airport in Washington.
It was Obama himself who said last week the episode could be a “teachable moment” on improving relations between police and minority communities.
Yet for now, his stated agenda is simply to allow for a good, productive conversation. The hope, in turn, is that people in communities across the nation will see the meeting as a model for how to solve differences — more listening, less shooting from the lip.
Yet a parallel goal for Obama is to cap this story and move attention back to his push for a national health care overhaul.
The White House says it is not paying for any transportation or other accommodation costs for Gates or Crowley.
After all the buildup, the public won’t see much. By design.
Obama, Gates and Crowley are expected to have their beers at a round table off the Rose Garden.
Gibbs said they will make no statements in the presence of the media. Reporters, photographers and video crews will be kept out of earshot. The whole public exposure may last less than a minute.
It should be just in time to get positive pictures of the men on the nightly network newscasts.
The actual meeting itself will go on after that, in private. Gates and Crowley are expected to have their families with them for tours and pictures.
“I hope it’s more than media hype. I really hope that it’s a moment where everyone acknowledges the complexity of race relations in our country,” said Kelly McBride, a specialist in ethics at the Poynter Institute journalism center.
“Everybody can walk out of the meeting thinking exactly what they thought walking in, and that would be fine,” she said. “But I would hope they would understand the others’ positions. If they get that far, it could be a model for what we should be doing when things like this happen again. Because it’s going to happen again.”
At the time of the incident, Gates demanded an apology from Crowley and called him a “rogue policeman.” Obama said the Cambridge policed “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates when he had shown proof he was in his home. Crowley said that, while he supported the president, Obama was “way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts.”
A new poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 41 percent disapprove of Obama’s handling of the Gates arrest, compared with 29 percent who approved. The poll also found that nearly 80 percent of Americans said they are now aware of Obama’s comments on the matter.