WASHINGTON — They came, they met, they drank. They did not apologize.
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The much-anticipated “beer summit” of President Obama, the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department in Massachusetts took place 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 Joseph R. Biden Jr.
After 10 days of near nonstop news coverage of a case that prompted a thousand news stories about race, the men sat down for less than an hour at a table across from the Oval Office under a magnolia tree.
“What you had today was two gentlemen who agreed to disagree on a particular issue,” a poised and smooth Sergeant Crowley said in a 15-minute news conference after the session. “We didn’t spend too much time dwelling on the past, and we decided to look forward.”
Professor 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 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,” Professor Gates said. “So I walked over, stuck out my hand and said, ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ That broke the awkwardness.”
Sergeant Crowley added that the families “had continued the tour as a group while the beer talk commenced.” He described the interaction between families as very cordial.
Professor 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,” Mr. Obama said 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, labor union America and his roots in Scranton, Pa., to add balance to the photo op that the White House presented: two black guys, two white guys, sitting around a table.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Obama had berated reporters for obsessing on the theatrics of the meeting, saying he was “fascinated with the fascination” over the issue, which has been boiling since Sergeant Crowley, responding to a call about a possible break-in, arrested Professor Gates for disorderly conduct even though he had ascertained that he was in his own home.
Mr. Obama added fuel to the fire a week later when he said in response to a question at a news conference that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” in arresting Professor Gates, a word choice he later said he regretted.
“I noticed this has been called the beer summit,” Mr. Obama said after meeting earlier Thursday with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines. “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.”
The press was allowed only a peek at the gathering for about 40 seconds — and from a distance so great that reporters could not hear a word that was said.
Nonetheless, some details emerged:
¶Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden were in shirtsleeves; Sergeant Crowley and Professor Gates wore suits.
¶The four drank out of beer mugs. Mr. Obama had a Bud Lite, Sergeant Crowley had Blue Moon, Professor Gates drank Sam Adams Light and Mr. Biden, who does not drink, had a Buckler nonalcoholic beer. (Mr. Biden put a lime slice in his beer. Sergeant Crowley, for his part, kept with Blue Moon tradition and had a slice of orange in his drink.)
¶The four men munched peanuts and pretzels out of small silver bowls.
Reporters and photographers had positioned themselves on the grounds waiting for the gathering to start, when a white family of five showed up. Were they the Crowleys? “Excuse me, may I ask who you are?” a reporter shouted.
“Not who you think,” came the reply.
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