A Tale of Two Presidents

On July 16, 2009 Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard University was arrested on the porch of his home in Cambridge after returning from a trip overseas. The arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley, had been called to the scene by a neighbor who saw Gates and the cab driver that had driven him from the airport having trouble with the front door of Gates's home, which had been damaged. Accounts conflict, but both agree that the arrest happened after Gates had provided ID proving he was in his own residence. Crowley arrested Gates for "disorderly conduct," allegedly after an altercation in which Gates shouted at Crowley.

On July 22, in response to a question during a press briefing, President Barack Obama made these remarks:

"I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

These remarks were met with broad outrage. Politicians and media figures on all parts of the political spectrum were critical of Obama's comments. In an attempt to calm the waters, Obama invited Gates and Crowley to a "Beer Summit" in which all three men talked and reconciled. The political damage of the incident was permanent, however. Obama's approval rating had already begun to slip in May amid deepening economic gloom, but the slide steepened in the wake of the "Beer Summit" incident, especially among white voters, and the President's numbers never recovered subsequently.

My point in reviewing this history is not to re-litigate the "Beer Summit" or re-assess its participants. It is to draw the contrast between the discourses surrounding two presidential administrations: that of Barack Obama and that of Donald Trump. In July of 2009 and May of 2020 Obama and Trump encountered comparable moments of social discord (similar in the kinds of cultural forces giving rise to them, different in the degree of brutality and tragic impact) surrounding issues of race and police-community interaction. Public perceptions of their respective responses to these incidents tells us much about the state of American society and culture surrounding issues of race.

Whatever else can be said about Barack Obama's performance during the "Beer Summit" incident, it cannot be credibly argued that he failed to make a good faith effort to play a constructive role. His actions acknowledged the legitimate concerns of all sides and the human situation of all participants. He cannot be charged with failing to at least attempt to serve both fairness in the abstract and the particular dignity of all involved. Most importantly, he acknowledged that his own comments might have offended some, and demonstrated a willingness to reconcile with those whom (for whatever reason) he had alienated.

Compare the comments for which Obama paid such a steep political price with those of President Donald Trump at a press briefing on June 5:

"Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement, regardless of race, color, gender, or creed. They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. They have to receive it. We all saw what happened last week. We can’t let that happen. Hopefully George [Floyd] is looking down right now and saying, “This is a great thing that’s happening for our country.” This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality. It’s really what our Constitution requires and it’s what our country is all about.”

On the surface, the substance of Trump's remarks matches closely with that of Barack Obama's.  Both men acknowledged an inequity in the experience of different communities during interactions with law enforcement. But where Obama's remarks might be criticized as incautious (the wisdom of a president ever declaring that police acted "stupidly" is debatable), Trump's are grotesque. Setting aside the sheer callous indignity of invoking the shade of a murder victim, "equal justice under law" was enshrined in the 14th Amendment more than 150 years ago, the fact that George Floyd had to die for lack of it is hardly reason to smile. Trump expresses a principle that might be thought of as the inverse of white privilege- "black indebtedness": Floyd should be happy because any acknowledgement that basic fairness should be given to African-Americans is a kind of gift.

No acknowledgement of the inappropriateness of these remarks has been forthcoming, and (given the President's track record over almost four years in office) it would be foolish to expect one. Hopefully Donald Trump will pay a political price for this kind of obtuseness. Thus far signs are ambivalent. Five Thirty-Eight's rolling average of polls continues to put Trump's approval rating at  41.3%, slightly less than it was before Floyd's murder and about six points lower than Barack Obama's average approval rating of 47.9%. Those numbers themselves paint a picture: though both men seem to have paid a price, it was arguably much exaggerated for Obama and much too lenient in the case of Trump.

What is the takeaway of this juxtaposition? Race is not going away as a problem in American society, and community policing will be at the heart of the issue as it continues to be negotiated from state to state, town to town. The reasons for this should be obvious: racial tensions undermine communal trust, and there is no social interaction in which trust is more necessary (or more fragile) than in interactions between citizens and police officers.

Police work is highly specialized. We expect police officers to have some part of the knowledge of a lawyer, some part of the skills of a soldier, and some part of the expertise of a social worker. Despite these demands (and the inherent dangers of the job), we pay police officers a salary that is virtually identical to the average salary of all professions across the board. We thus cannot be surprised when sensitivity to issues of race is distributed in the police force on a par with the average attitudes prevalent in American society at large. In a country where 41.3% of voters continue to approve of Donald Trump, it can be no wonder that the incidence of racially charged conflict in police-community interaction is problematic.

Reform is obviously necessary, and will require complicated interventions. One simple change suggests itself right away, however. We must remove Donald Trump from office, and we must never elect a president like him again. If the comparison between Obama and Trump teaches us anything, it is that there is no "getting it perfectly right." Racial relations remain a complex minefield in American society and culture, it is unreasonable to expect that any leader (indeed that any public figure) will be able to communicate meaningfully with the nation without ever giving offense or transgressing boundaries.

What we can expect and must insist, however, is that our president make a good-faith effort to engage the problem self-critically and in all of its intractable complexity. Given the tragic injustice in our past, restoring communal trust has been and will continue to be the work of generations and centuries. In the face of such challenges, even earnest work like that of Barack Obama will yield only fitful progress. We can ill afford the ways in which a negligent and malignant leader like Donald Trump will set us backwards.