Obama plays peacemaker at beer summit

President Obama hoisted beers in the Rose Garden on Thursday evening with the black professor and white police officer at the heart of a racially charged incident that captivated the nation and damaged the president’s standing at a critical moment in his first year in office.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley wore dark suits and sipped from tall, frosty glass mugs as they sat next to each other and across from Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was a surprise guest at the meeting.

Afterward, Sgt. Crowley said the conversation was “frank,” “cordial and productive” but that no apologies were made either by himself or Mr. Gates.

“I think what you had today is two gentlemen agree to disagree on a particular issue. I don’t think that we spent too much time dwelling on the past. We spent a lot of time discussing the future,” Sgt. Crowley said in speaking to reporters at the AFL-CIO headquarters a few blocks from the White House.

He said he and Mr. Gates had agreed to meet again in a few weeks in an ongoing effort to “learn from each other.”

“I thank God that live in a country in which police officers put their lives at risk to protect us every day, and, more than ever, I’ve come to understand and appreciate their daily sacrifices on our behalf,” Mr. Gates wrote on www.theroot.com, where he serves as editor in chief.

“The national conversation over the past week about my arrest has been rowdy, not to say tumultuous and unruly. But we’ve learned that we can have our differences without demonizing one another,” he said.

The president - who last week said Sgt. Crowley “acted stupidly” when he took Mr. Gates from his house in handcuffs following a 911 call from a passer-by who thought Mr. Gates might be a burglar - said the meeting was “a friendly, thoughtful conversation.”

“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,” Mr. Obama said.

But despite the president’s attempt to play peacemaker, a plurality of the public disapproves of the way Mr. Obama has handled the incident, according to a new poll Thursday that also suggested that the flap has contributed to Mr. Obama’s slumping overall approval rating.

The poll found that 41 percent disapproved of the president’s statements about the Gates incident, with 29 percent approving and 30 percent having no opinion, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Mr. Obama’s overall job approval in the Pew poll slipped from 61 percent to 54 percent from June to July. The results of the survey, conducted Monday with 480 people and having a margin of error of 5.5 percentage points, came as other polls released this week showed declining approval for the president’s health care reform proposal.

“Politically, [the Gates incident] has hurt President Obama in the public mind in terms of his character,” said Juan Williams, a well-known black journalist and commentator.

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