We Interrupt this Healthcare Debate to Bring You a Culture War

EJ Dionne once wrote an entire book arguing that Americans hate politics because it offers mindless ideological polarization instead of the pragmatic problem-solving the people crave. The second to last week of July 2009 was not a good week for that thesis. Faced with an opportunity to debate and discuss ambitious plans to reform the country's costly healthcare system, everybody seems simultaneously to have decided: "Nah, healthcare's boring. We'd rather talk about race!" The most gleeful assessment of the controversy was offered –  surprise, surprise – by the Rev. Al Sharpton. Sharpton told Politico that Barack Obama’s comments on the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. arrest revealed that the president was not really “post-racial.” Credit Sharpton with this: he knows exactly where to stick the shiv into the back of the president who took his livelihood away. Look for multiple Sharpton appearances on talk radio today and cable TV tonight. From a political point of view, the president misstepped in his East Room statement criticizing the Cambridge police force. Conservatives and Republicans will make the most of the misstep. The shouted words attributed to Prof. Gates by the Cambridge police, “You don’t know who your [sic] messing with,” nicely resonate with conservative populist themes that Obama represents an over-privileged, over-educated elite who will deploy any excuse, including race, to escape obligations and elevate themselves. Perhaps you’ve heard it before:

[I]n small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

 We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco. … Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.

Never get in the way of an opponent’s mistake is a good rule of politics. But so too is: don’t overplay your own hand. It’s not 1969 anymore, and the hippies vs. hardhats drama has long since faded into history. Obama has tumbled into so much trouble on this issue precisely because the arresting officer in the Gates case turns out to be a policeman who has successfully absorbed the cultural revolutions of the past four decades. From the local TV report:

"I acted appropriately," Crowley told WBZ Radio's Carl Stevens Thursday.

"Mister Gates was given plenty of opportunities to stop what he was doing. He didn't. He acted very irrational,  he controlled the outcome of that event."

"There was a lot of yelling, there was references to my mother, something you wouldn't expect from anybody that should be grateful that you were there investigating a report of a crime in progress, let alone a Harvard University professor."

According to the police report, Crowley asked Gates to talk outside, to which he responded "Yeah, I'll speak with your mama outside." …

Crowley maintained he had done nothing wrong in arresting Gates.

"I support the president of the United States 110-percent," he told WBZ Radio.

"I think he's way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts, as he himself stated before he made that comment. I don't know what to say about that. I guess a friend of mine would support my position, too."

Crowley has taught a class on racial profiling for five years at Lowell Police Academy. In the class, he teaches officers about different situations and how officers should handle them. …

Crowley, 42, said he won't apologize. And his union has expressed "full and unqualified" support for him.

"The apology wont come from me. I've done nothing wrong," he told WBZ.

Fellow officers, black and white, say he is well-liked and respected on the force. Crowley was a campus police officer at Brandeis University in July 1993 when he administered CPR trying to save the life of former Boston Celtics player Reggie Lewis.

Lewis, who was black, collapsed and died during an off-season workout.  … "We were shocked to hear the president weigh in on this during a prime time news conference. They are a model police department; true professionals. It's a shame that they are being nationally targeted like this," Harold MacGilvray of the Massachusetts Municipal Police Coalition said in a statement.

Crowley said he wouldn't do anything different if he had the chance to do things over.

"If a similar call came in tomorrow, I wouldn't shy away from responding and I would do what I have to do."

After reviewing the interview, the liberal journalist Michael Tomasky ruefully commented,

Could someone please give Gates a hit of what Crowley is smoking?

Let’s all take that same hit. If Sharpton is right – and the incident revealed that President Obama is not so post-racial as represented – that should not constitute an invitation to conservatives to reveal the same thing about themselves. The official Republican response to the incident has touched the right chords. The NSRC asks in a web campaign that went live yesterday:

Do you think it’s appropriate for our nation’s Commander in Chief to stand before a national audience and criticize the men and women in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day, when by his own admission, he doesn’t even know all the facts?

Beyond that, the NSRC allowed the CNN video of the press conference to speak for itself. It’s not about race, it’s about policing. Right message, right tone. As to how to do it wrong – well, the AM dial today will crackle with examples.