Perhaps the biggest "teachable moment" from the Henry Louis Gates Jr. saga was for President Barack Obama: If you want to improve race relations, you have to enter the fray.
Even some of Obama's fiercest opponents say that by bringing together the black professor and the white police officer who arrested him, the president had orchestrated an unlikely and unifying moment, a peaceable kingdom in the Rose Garden.
Symbolic? Yes. Made for TV? Certainly. But these things could not obscure the fact that a president who has tried to transcend racial matters was down in the arena, talking about race.
"The cynic in me wants to shoot holes in it, the critic in me wants to pick it apart," said conservative radio host Mike Gallagher. "But I'm sorry, you have two sides, polar opposites in a racially tinged confrontation like this, sitting down with the president of the United States over a beer at the White House?
"This is a great step forward in showing how you can take a confrontation, a conflict, and make a positive out of it."
This also is the kind of direct action Obama had sidestepped as he sought the support of white voters weary of racial dissonance.
In March, Obama was asked whether he agreed with Attorney General Eric Holder's comments that many Americans have been "cowards" because "we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race."
"I'm not somebody who believes that constantly talking about race somehow solves racial tensions," Obama told The New York Times. "I think what solves racial tensions is fixing the economy, putting people to work, making sure that people have health care."
The standoff between Gates and Obama has the potential to exacerbate tensions. Many blacks supported Gates' claim that he was racially profiled by Crowley, while many whites insisted Crowley displayed no bias in investigating a possible break-in at Gates' home.
Gates demanded an apology from Crowley and called him a "rogue policeman." After Obama said police had "acted stupidly" in arresting an angry Gates for disorderly conduct, Crowley said Obama was "way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts."
The atmosphere was much different after Thursday's conversation.
"No tension," Crowley said.
Mostly, racial conflicts fade out without any consultation, let alone resolution. Imagine the widow of Sean Bell meeting with the New York police officers who shot her husband, or the black teens in Jena, La., talking to the white schoolmate they attacked.
That made the White House meeting even more remarkable — "revolutionary and potentially healing, a peace pipe for modern times," wrote the right-leaning columnist Kathleen Parker.
"When future archaeologists excavate our history, they will doubtless marvel at the symbolism of that simple gesture," she wrote.
It probably never would have happened had Obama not criticized Crowley, a mistake that demanded damage control.
Why not?
"His advisers would have said, 'No, it's not about health care!'" said Rev. Jim Wallis, president of the progressive Christian group Sojourners and author of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It."

It was political theater — but it sent a powerful message, Wallis said.

"It was a parable for what needs to happen off-camera all the time — that kind of conversation," he said. "Obama was saying, 'This now needs to happen.'"

Obama has rarely joined that conversation since his national debut at the 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, when he declared, "There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States of America."

But as the first black president, son of a white mother and black father, many say he in uniquely suited — even obligated — to lead the discussion.

"As a white man, I would say the nation needs a president to be proactive on race," Wallis said. "He has a power to be that, the capacity to be that, the identity and the history."

Gallagher said no one besides Obama could have orchestrated this type of resolution.

"You had to almost have a black president who's capable of saying to Gates, the man who feels aggrieved and insulted, 'I need you at the White House.'"

"Obama said ... 'Let's show the world that we're trying to advance race relations rather than digress,'" he continued. "And you know what? As one of his fiercest critics, he gets an A-plus on this. I'm just blown away."

Much has been made of the symbolism of a black president and how he provides an opportunity for people to talk about race. In some ways, race is always an element of any conversation Obama is involved in.

But "watercooler conversations aren't enough any more," Wallis said. "They don't go deep enough, they are too short and they are very safe. You gotta sit at the table."

That's exactly what Crowley, Gates and Obama did on the White House lawn, along with Vice President Joe Biden, whose presence conveniently balanced out the image.

Earlier, Crowley and Gates talked after they crossed paths while separately touring the White House with their relatives.

They continued their tour as one large group.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Jesse Washington covers race and ethnicity for The Associated Press. AP news researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

AMSTERDAM – In three weeks on the witness stand, Charles Taylor has painted a portrait of an African strongman — navigating rebellions and palace intrigue, and ultimately failing in a struggle to survive as Liberia's president.
By turns vitriolic and professorial, Taylor is lifting a veil during his war crimes trial on the life of a guerrilla commander who fought enemies across borders and at home to seize his country's presidential mansion, and had aspirations to become a pan-African leader.
He has sought to counter claims he was a cannibalistic tyrant trading human lives for diamonds in neighboring Sierra Leone by describing himself as a democrat and statesman surrounded by enemies consumed with the notion to "get Taylor."
The detailed narrative is fascinating, if selective.
"He's a great communicator," says David Crane, the prosecutor who drew up Taylor's indictment six years ago. "He's just not telling the whole story,"
As president, Taylor felt under siege, rarely trusting those around him.
When he traveled, he rode in a convoy with two presidential limousines so that potential attackers would never know which car he was in.
He says he created a broad government, bringing in former enemies in an attempt at national reconciliation. But he acknowledged keeping them under constant surveillance.
"Everybody is watching his movements, his attitude," Taylor said of Varmuyan Sherif, a former bodyguard who testified against him.
"This was a man who just tried to kill me" when he was a general in an opposing militia. Taylor said that Sherif, who described himself as close to the president, was never allowed to carry a weapon in his presence.
Taylor is the first defense witness at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. His testimony is likely to continue several weeks more, and the defense has lined up another 200 potential witnesses.
He is accused of 11 counts of murder, rape, sexual slavery, cruelty, forced labor and recruiting child soldiers as he supported rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone. He has denied all allegations.
His British lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, is leading him through a month-by-month account of his rise to power, from the invasion of his rebel force in 1989 to overthrow the tyrannical regime of Samuel K. Doe to his 1997 election and his own ouster in 2003, when his government was accused of surpassing Doe's in brutality.
Along the way Taylor describes encounters with former allies and opponents, as well as his sometimes tumultuous personal affairs with a succession of wives and girlfriends. He casually name-drops acquaintances like Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson.
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the current Liberian leader and Africa's first woman president, was a former supporter and fundraiser with whom Taylor said his relations "had gotten rocky." Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Taylor said, was friendly and encouraging of Liberia's "democratic reforms" during a telephone conversation, even though the country was then under a U.N. embargo.
He is usually sedate but has moments of jocularity and sudden flashes of venom — using calculated moments of outrage to deny allegations against him and denounce witnesses as liars or madmen.
That atrocities happened in Sierra Leone is undeniable. For more than a year prosecutors brought a parade of victims displaying the stumps of limbs hacked off by rebels and women who told of being dragged off into slavery.
The defense strategy must be to dissuade the three judges that Taylor was responsible for the rebel actions and to undermine the prosecution's allegations that he had a command-and-control function over the militias to gain access to Sierra Leone's mineral wealth.

Crane, who is now a Syracuse University law professor, said Taylor was trying to portray himself as Liberia's savior and as a victim of circumstances. "He steps very quickly over the 1.2 million human beings that he destroyed in 10 years."

Alpha Sesay, a Sierra Leone lawyer who writes a daily summary of the trial for an Internet site, says Taylor has been trying at every turn to distance himself from the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front, or RUF.

"Many of us used to think that Taylor was reckless. But now, listening, you can see that as president he tried to cover every trace of his association with the RUF," said Sesay, whose own family repeatedly were chased from their homes by rebels.

In that regard, Taylor's performance so far has been "brilliant," he said. "I've always known he is a smooth talker. He can be very very convincing."

"Sometimes I get a little frustrated," Barack Obama admitted to AARP in late July, "because this is one of those situations where it's so obvious that the system we have isn't working well for too many people, and that we could just be doing better." He was talking about health care, of course. As Washington collapsed toward its August recess, the President's reform efforts were looking distinctly iffy, even though he is absolutely right about the need for change. The system is a fiscal mess, the king of all budget busters. It is also a moral mess, leaving far too many Americans with far too little protection. But the President is wrong when he says, "The system we have isn't working well for too many people." The vast majority - more than 80% in the latest TIME poll - are satisfied with their health care. They may be worried about losing their coverage, and angry as their premiums rise, but the health-care "crisis" is theoretical to most Americans. That's the immediate source of Obama's frustration, but there is a larger, structural issue blocking his path. (See the five biggest hurdles to health-care reform.)
One of the most difficult things to do in a democracy is react to a problem that is real, but not immediately threatening. Obama is trying to do this in two monster areas, health care and climate change. "He's killing me," says Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, referring to the hordes of special-interest groups that have camped on her doorstep and clogged her phone lines. Stabenow is smiling as she says it. She supports the broad thrust of Obama's initiatives. "But you can't believe all the groups that want to make their case. There are the doctors, the nurses, the cancer society," she continues, raising the specter of a conga line of disease groups bending her ear. "All of them have legitimate concerns. And that's just health care."
As long ago as 1982, the economist Mancur Olson made the argument, in The Rise and Decline of Nations, that as a democracy matures, special interests grow more entrenched. Their intense dedication to their own specific needs, Olson wrote, often trumps the broader, but less focused, interests of society. And that was before the rise of cable news and talk radio. It was before the utterly corrupting effect of televised advertising on politicians really kicked in - the need to raise money (from interest groups, mostly) and to exercise extreme caution lest one of your votes be used to decapitate you in a 20-second ad. It was before the Democrats and Republicans transformed themselves into more strictly ideological parties. Put all these factors in the cauldron and you create a poisonous atmosphere that makes legislative action on big issues almost impossible. It is also a prescription for conservative governance of the sort that has thrived since Ronald Reagan. Doing nothing is the easiest thing. (Read TIME's exclusive health-care interview with Obama.)
"We've gotten rusty at legislating," says Representative Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat. He is being kind. There are only two sorts of legislation that seem to pass these days: things that have to pass, like budgets - and cotton-candy giveaways, like tax cuts or the wildly irresponsible, unfunded Medicare drug bill that George W. Bush enacted. Occasionally, responsible actions take place in the budget process. Bill Clinton spent most of his political capital on deficit reduction, which helped fuel the economic boom of the 1990s. Obama has just managed to kill the F-22, an anachronistic fighter jet. Very, very occasionally a special interest will take it on the chin - as the teachers' unions did when Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandated a testing regimen the teachers didn't like. But the passage of landmark legislation like the health-industry reforms that Obama is seeking has become about as common as politicians who refuse to run television ads. It just doesn't seem to happen anymore.
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These constrictions account for some of the strange decisions that Obama has made in shaping the health-care debate. Since most people like the health care they have, the President has been forced to say, "If you like the health care you have, you can keep it." But it is difficult to enact substantive reforms when 80% of the system stays the same. The need for simplicity has also forced Obama to stick with - indeed, to double down on - the current practice of having employers provide health insurance. This is the weakest, most illogical part of the system. It is difficult to sustain in a global economy where American corporations have overseas competitors that aren't saddled with providing health care for their employees.
The pressures of partisanship have forced other contortions. It seems obvious that the cost of malpractice insurance cripples doctors - and drives up the number of tests and procedures they perform in order to bulletproof themselves against lawsuits. Obama has said he is open to malpractice reform, but congressional Democrats haven't included it in their bills because trial lawyers are a major Democratic special-interest group. Another Democratic interest group, organized labor, has blocked the most logical and progressive way to fund a universal health-care system - eliminating the tax exclusion on health benefits and replacing it with a progressive tax credit. The health-care exclusion is, at approximately $250 billion, the single biggest tax break in the federal code. The problem is that unions have negotiated generous health packages over the years. According to Senator Stabenow, autoworkers get a package worth about $15,000 per year - and public employees get more, about $19,000. "The police and firefighters get even more," she says. "But they need it, and do you really want to tax them for putting their lives on the line?" (Advocates like Representative Cooper insist that exceptions for some unions can be made.) (See the results of TIME's health-care poll.)
The best-constructed health-care bill, developed by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, would eliminate the health-care tax exclusion the unions want. "But we also offer a tax credit of $17,000 per year, which is more than most people are getting in health-care benefits now," he says. Wyden's bill addresses most of the other major health-care issues. It has 14 bipartisan co-sponsors in the Senate, it covers everyone and offers more choices, it reforms the health-insurance business, it alleviates the responsibility of employers, it has a robust cost-control mechanism, and it has been scored as revenue-neutral over 10 years by the Congressional Budget Office. "It's got everything," says Stabenow, one of the co-sponsors, "except interest groups to back it."
At the end of his presidency, Clinton told me that the biggest mistake he made in trying to reform health care was pulling a pen out of his pocket during the 1994 State of the Union address and threatening to veto any health-care legislation that didn't achieve universal coverage. He had come to believe that the only way to get something big like health-care reform was to do it incrementally. Obama has been wise not to make any take-it-or-leave-it offers. He is still fighting for a comprehensive bill - and he still may get one. But he may have to settle for less. (Watch TIME's video "Uninsured Again.")
"Something called health-reform legislation will pass," a prominent Democrat told me. "The political consequences of not passing anything would be too great." A bare-bones bill that reforms the health-insurance industry - insurers would have to accept all comers, including those with pre-existing conditions, at the same rates - is a distinct possibility. Expanded coverage, perhaps including the parents of children eligible for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), is also probable. Most important for long-term reform, a system of health-care superstores - the wonks call them "exchanges" or "co-ops" - where individuals and small businesses can go to buy a plan, could be included.
"Look, we've already passed three major pieces of health-care legislation," says Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution, who is skeptical about the chances for a comprehensive bill. He was referring to the expansion of SCHIP and the funds for electronic records and studies to monitor which treatments are most effective that were included in the stimulus bill. "If we can pass health-care exchanges, which could be expanded in the future and are the seeds of real change, this will be the most successful year of health-care reform in decades." The President wants much more; the media expect much more - but given the constraints of our middle-aged democracy, perhaps we should be happy to achieve any sort of progress at all.
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Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From A to Z."
View this article on Time.comRelated articles on Time.com:Health-Care Poll: Americans Support Obama's Reform Goals Can Obama Close the Deal on Health Care? Barack Obama, MD TIME Health-Care Poll: Americans Back Reform but Worry About Details Cost Controls, Not Universal Coverage, Drive Health Care Debate

BUDAPEST, Hungary – Felipe Massa's doctor says the Formula One driver will return home to Brazil on Monday.
Dr. Dino Altman said Friday at AEK hospital that Massa is "in a good mood and in good shape" and wants to race again as soon as possible.
Altman didn't reveal how long Massa's full recovery would take but said the Brazilian would not need "special treatment" to overcome his injuries.
The 28-year-old Massa underwent surgery on multiple skull fractures after he was hit in the helmet by a loose part from another car and crashed into a protective tire barrier during qualifying for Ferrari at the Hungarian Grand Prix last Saturday.