In the beginning, there was President Jimmy Carter and the Camp David Accords.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton hosted the public signing of the Oslo Accords by Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
BTW, I was hanging out at the Willard Hotel the Sunday before the signing ceremony when Arafat happened to walk by. I got a chance to shake his liver-spotted hand and wish him luck.
Today, President Barack Obama will practice beer diplomacy at the highly anticipated picnic table summit.
The Washington Post reports:
Obama, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police are scheduled to gather over beers at a picnic table outside the Oval Office, joined by their families. The White House hopes the meeting will transform a public relations misstep for the nation’s first African American president into a “teachable moment” for improving the nation’s race relations.
While the arrest of Gates is less weighty than, say, peace in the Middle East, there are two warring factions in the People’s Republic of Cambridge.
The Post notes:
Even as the two men agreed to meet again at the White House, Gates has remained consistent in his belief that, when he was arrested July 16 for disorderly conduct (a charge that was later dropped), racial profiling occurred. And Crowley has remained consistent in his belief that it did not.
Oh, to be a fly buzzing over the White House lawn when Gates and Crowley sit across from each other at the picnic table.
