Posted on 07/25/2009 7:33:08 PM PDT by Chet 99
THEY are calling it bar-stool diplomacy – a novel attempt by President Barack Obama to cool a heated racial controversy by inviting the offended parties to settle their differences over a beer at the White House.
Yet the president’s efforts to limit the fallout from a row over the arrest last week of Henry Louis Gates Jr, a black Harvard professor, may serve to extend a furore that has shaken the White House and raised questions about Obama’s vaunted leadership skills.
The row showed no sign of diminishing yesterday as Massachusetts media pressed for the release of police tapes that could shed new light on the angry exchanges between Gates and Sergeant James Crowley, a white officer who arrived at the professor’s Cambridge home to investigate a report of a break-in.
The incident led to a rare breakdown of Obama’s previously impressive political judgment. Having spent much of the past two years steering clear of racial controversy and nurturing an image of so-called “postracial” conciliation, the president plunged unexpectedly into the Gates affair.
He declared on Wednesday, when it was still far from clear what had happened, that the Massachusetts police had “acted stupidly” by arresting Gates, whom Obama described as a personal friend.
By Friday evening, Obama was back-pedalling furiously and his invitation to Gates and Crowley to join him for a beer was interpreted as an acknowledgment by the president that he had spoken too hastily in “maligning” the police. “I could have calibrated those words differently,” he said.
Yet the move also ensured that a story he desperately wants to go away will continue to overshadow his domestic political agenda. No beer-drinkers are likely to make as many headlines as the president, the professor and the policeman.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
“However, Obama is supposed to make peace around the world, and get all of mankind singing Kumbaya, but he does not have the diplomacy, or common sense, to avoid situations like this?”
All kidding aside, this is the really scary part about this situation. Any junior executive, branch manager, what have you, would have enough sense and experience to know not to comment on a situation that they don’t have all the facts on. That the POTUS would be stupid enough to comment on something like this, that is so obviously a local matter, not to mention a racial tinder box, is preposterous!
We may have been better off with Hillary than this bozo.
just perfect !!!
I’m glad BHO didn’t ‘calibrate’ his remarks but let his real sentiments come front and center. A rare honest moment for him. Why he’s in such deep doo.
It certainly would be appropriate to invite Larry Sinclair, so that the race and homosexuality are on the table as well!!!
Ha!....perfect.
I would never disagree with that statement. I said it after Barack was elected that he has the potential to become the worst president in our history (that was based on everything I knew about him). We see that potential playing out in real time now.
Bottom line is...I hate all socialists/collectivists/scumbags/criminals.
The Brit press is a lot more objective about Obama. They are right on this controversy—it’s not going away!
“How do the race cards look like???”
Well, uber-arrogant, affirmative action, talentless, “Professor” Gates gave us all a palpable demonstration this past week of just EXACTLY what playing the race card looks like.
LOL!
Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,
Ninety-nine bottles of beer.
If one of those bottles of beer should happen to fall.
Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.
Gates was chosen by Mr. Potato Head.
I've called him that for some time. It takes a village of con-men, criminals, socialists, enablers, propagandists to destroy a country.
The United States of America is bigger than Barry. We are bigger than Barry.
Obama is not post-racial......just post-honky.
I think new words must be invented.
Can you imagine the seething hatred awaiting Sgt Crowley when he goes to have a beer with President Racist?
It has been the slow but steady redefinition of words over the centuries that have rendered the meaning of the Constitution meaningless. More’s the pity.
Why does he always look like that - pink and inflamed and ridiculous?
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