Lacking Nuance

The trademark of the Obama campaign was the ability to stay on message. The Obama team then, and now understands the voracity and viciousness of the 24 hour news cycle. The news industry has become a cannibalistic beast that now carries a potency probably far exceeding the intentions of the founding fathers or the protection of the First amendment. Yet in a free society, the media as the voice of the “people” have become a money making sacred cow, while our politics too often have been reduced to a high stakes game of verbal last tag. Last summer when Barack Obama went to Europe, he returned to a nonstop barrage of news depicting him as presumptive, and marginalized as a celebrity. Later the afterglow of his nomination speech in Denver was cut short by the news buzz of the self proclaimed barracuda from Alaska Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. In both cases the Obama team’s media rapid assault team landed successful counter punches.

As a result of a historic political success, the Obama administration has been extremely proactive in micromanaging the shifting winds and vagrancies of a billion dollar news industry that feed an insatiable American appetite for news that seems demand very little in the way of accuracy or balance. Blogs, networks, talking heads representing the entire landscape of political affiliations represent the emerging opinion battleground as they raise the emotional volume while appealing to our lower angels. As a result a new cottage industry has emerged that has made millionaires out of anyone who can manipulate public opinion. Any one applying for a job with a politician not armed with a skill set in spin doctoring need not apply. Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th President due in large major to the masterful way in which they navigated the every changing flow of public opinion.

Part of the Obama mystic is being a political Cool Hand Luke, calm in a storm, and having an uncanny political instinct. He was going to be the “steady” hand on the wheel. In the aftermath of the Obama victory, one political term that is gaining currency, “being nuanced". The Obama team, argue that one of the core attributes that separate him from the 43rd President is his ability to be temperate in tone, and approach. Webster defines nuanced as the ability to “define delicate shadings”, in short seeing the world through the prism of gray and not exclusively through black and white. When critics of President Obama condemned aim in his response last summer to the crisis in Georgia or this year’s revolution in Tehran, his supporters offered the description of nuance.

Nowhere is the need for nuance more prevalent than on the topic of race. Both candidate and President Obama have demonstrated an acute awareness that the subject of race in America remains fraught with political danger. The manner in which then candidate Barack Obama responded to the subject of race, was deft, disarming, and yet still direct. Barack Obama’s political opponents ultimately paid the price trying to use race as a wedge issue. However, last week President Obama’s response at his press conference lacked nuance, or deftness. Indeed it could be seen as tone deaf to other nuances at play. By falling into the trap of automatically defaulting to side against a white policeman in a “he said – he said” situation, President Obama may have been the one who acted “stupidly”. The “no drama” President, effectively stepped on his own message, and diverted precious political time, and capital at time when he is hemorrhaging in both areas.

Yet what is more troubling than President Obama’s political gaffe is that his entrance into the “Professor Gates controversy” presupposes that Professor Gate’s version of the truth was one hundred percent accurate. As a personal note, earlier that week I was dismissed from a jury panel where judging by the voir dire questions, the case would pivot on the testimony of two police officers against a black male defendant. I wrote on my personal blog that I believed that I was dismissed from the panel because I could not convince the prosecutor that I would not be biased against the police and hold the police to a higher standard on the witness stand. The prosecutor was right. As a black man who has been profiled - often, I completely understand why white cops are not given the benefit of the doubt within the black community, and I understand how that would extend to the President of the United States who just happens to be black man.

Yet, to be honest, when I listened to the version of the incident by officer Crowley, Professor Gates’ response smacked of what I call black elitism - a high brow version of the “I’m Rick James - bitch!” Thus, the visuals created by Officer Crowley’s words seems quite credible to me. I can visualize the kind of black entitlement, coupled with the righteous indignation that is exacerbating by even suggesting they provide identification – in their own house no less. “Don’t you know who I am?” Which also begs the question - at least to me, if Professor Gates gave his ID, the police officer faces an untenable situation. Wouldn’t arresting a man of Louis Gates stature with his connections in his own house who was complying in a deferential manner create a now win situation for him as a white policeman? As a man working on issues like diversity Officer Crowley has to realize the ramifications of arresting Professor Gates, which is one of the things makes the Gates version hard to for me believe. Shades of Gray.

All which leads us to question who to believe, who was lying, who was giving the abridged version? Who knows? So what was the major difference in my experience with the prosecutor, and President Obama’s? Simple - his was not a voir dire exercise like mine in which I was instructed to rule out shades of gray, and enter the stark world of black and white. My courtroom experience was quite a contrast to the leader of free world. Barack Obama usually chomps at the bit to display the calm visage of a reflective leader therefore for him to stumble into the kind of legal and racial quagmire he has worked tirelessly to avoid was a lapse pure and simple. With little room for error and the fate of his centerpiece domestic policy lying in the balance President Obama picked a singularly inopportune time to blunder.

To his credit, by week’s end President Obama begun to return to form, at least by embracing the notion that his response was improper and presented an olive branch to both the Cambridge Police and Officer Crowley. Finally planning a Kumbaya moment at the White House with both parties over a beer he set a tension breaking tone. In suggesting that his initial response should have “recalibrated” differently he noted that this was a teachable moment. Agreed let’s all pay attention because the issue of race in America is one where the education never ends.