THE MOMENT - AT 7:56 A.M. ET:  At the Angel's Corner earlier this week we examined the president's predicament - declining poll numbers, with nothing in sight that is likely to improve them.  But we cautioned that the president still remains personally popular because the public likes him.  If that likability factor declines, however, his main political armor would be seriously dented. 

Enter Mr. Obama at his press conference.

Toward the end, after a meandering, useless discussion of health care, the president waded into a controversy involving the arrest of African-American Professor Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The president, who was not a witness, pronounced that the Cambridge police had acted "stupidly." 

Now we have a firestorm.  It is growing.  That moment at his press conference, replying to a question from Lynn Sweet of Obama's hometown paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, may turn out to have been the moment when millions of Americans thought, "Maybe I don't like him so much."  Even in liberal Massachusetts there's a backlash. 

There are two major elements here - race and class.  Mr. Obama freely admitted that he didn't have the facts about how race might have figured in Gates's arrest, but condemned the police anyway.  It was outrageous, and the fact that the president seemed automatically to believe Gates's version was a role reversal of the old, ugly practice of some white officers automatically believing whites over blacks in criminal cases.  The fact that Gates is a personal friend compounded the offense.

But then there's class, and I argue that this might turn out to be the element that damages the president most in this expanding controversy.  Gates is a college professor.  The man who arrested him is a cop.  It turns out that he's a cop with an outstanding record, especially in race relations, but he's still "only" a cop.  There's an element in the liberal elites that believe that academics are a saintly class, above us all, and not subject to criticism.  You can imagine how that does down with the working stiffs around America, especially those, like police officers and firefighters, who put their lives on the line.  I don't really think that the anthropology department at Harvard is a high-risk area.

I happen to like academic people very much.  I have good friends who teach.  I revere the great professors I was privileged to study with at the University of Chicago and Columbia.  I was an intern for a United States senator, Paul H. Douglas, who'd been a distinguished economist and professor.  I love spending time with scholars. 

But a saintly class - no.  In fact, it's been professors themselves who've stressed to me the need to question scholars, to challenge, never simply to accept or to worship.  But in Obama's clique, worship is too often the practice.  How dare a cop challenge a full professor?  But professors are human.  They make mistakes.  Not all are noble.  They have the same failings as other mortals.  And the notion that we automatically believe Gates because he's an academic is simply unacceptable.

The controversy is hurting the president.  He is not a humble or reflective man, but he should try.  He should simply apologize - both to the public, to police officers generally, and to the officer specifically involved in Gates's arrest.  He should call that officer personally.  Steps like this would do the president a great deal of good right now, a time when his arrogance is on full display.

Will he have the sense to do it?

July 24, 2009