As close to an apology as he’ll get

The controversy over the Cambridge police officer and the Harvard professor has escalated by the hour and taken over news cycles these past two days. This needed a resolution, and the more the details came out of the original case the more it appeared that resolution had to involve an apology from President Obama.

This was about as close as we’ll get to that.

President Obama this afternoon telephoned the Cambridge police sergeant accused of racial profiling and expressed regret for his choice of words at a recent press conference, saying he inadvertently ratcheted up the media frenzy when he said police “acted stupidly” in the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.

“I want to make clear that in my choice of words I unfortunately gave the impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sergeant [James M.] Crowley specifically. I could have calibrated those words differently,” Obama said in a surprise appearance at the White House briefing room. “I told this to Sergeant Crowley. I continue to believe that there was an overreaction in pulling professor Gates out of his home and to the station. I also continue to believe, based on what I’ve heard, that professor Gates overreacted as well.”

The five-minute phone conversation between Obama and Crowley took place at about 2:15 p.m., two hours after police unions held a press conference at a hotel in Cambridge asking the president to apologize. In recounting the exchange for the media, the president did not use the words “apology” or “sorry,” but he made it clear he regretted fanning the flames of an already explosive story.

He didn’t only ‘give the impression’ that he was maligning the Cambridge Police Department. He said they “acted stupidly”.

“My hope is that as a consequence of this event, this ends up being what’s called a teachable moment,” Obama said. “Where all of us — instead of pumping up the volume — spend a little more time listening to each other and trying to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers and minority communities. That instead of flinging accusations, we can all be a little more reflective about what we can do to contribute to more unity.

That’s a good idea, a real good one. But this is about the fourth time President Obama has referred to offensive remarks as something he or a member of his administration (Homeland Security’s Napolitano) or nominee (Sotomayor) would perhaps want to phrase another way, given the chance. While that exhibits some remorse, it still leaves the impression that perhaps the remorse is over the trouble the remarks caused, instead of the remarks that caused the trouble.

Nonetheless, the charm offensive is on.

Between jokes, Obama noted that he had a political motivation to tamp down the rhetoric over Gates’s arrest.

“Over the last two days as we’ve discussed this issue, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nobody has been paying much attention to health care,” Obama said, eliciting laughter from the press corps.