Obama's Apology

This hastily scheduled press conference by President Obama illustrates the perils involved when a public official disowns his remarks. There's little doubt that the president's communications consultants wrestled mightily with the decision to make this quasi-apology. As often as not, these disavowals end up perpetuating the very discussion they're intended to quash.









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The White House obviously felt that the attention showered on the President's remarks about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, threatened to overshadow more important subjects. But as often as not, these sorts of apologies compound the problem, first because they fuel more discussion on the original problem and then because the apology becomes problematic, in itself. In this case, Obama's apology "choice of words," gives risk to a new risky narrative: President defensive over remarks on race.

So now the White House may not only need to contend with protests over his comments on a racially charged issue, but also allegations that he lacks the courage of his convictions.

The irony, of course, is his comments represented a rare moment of frank, authentic emotion for a President who has so assiduously dodged discussions of racial dynamics in America -- a tendency that has perturbed Obama's pivotal supporters in the black community.

Because they seemed out of character, the media magnified the remarks, and at least the illusion of a national "controversy," as the Tribune account describes it, ensued. Whether the reaction to Obama's comments truly resembled a "controversy" is debatable. Obviously, the media was obsessed with the remarks, and the Republicans tried their best to enflame racial tensions. But there's not a lot of evidence that the mass public is fixated on the issue.

In the end, Obama's original remarks were intended to acknowledge the pain of longstanding racial wounds. Let's hope that in backtracking from those comments, he hasn't inflicted his own political wound.