For a guy who has a reputation in the media of being such a smooth talker, President Obama sure suffers from more than his share of foot-in-mouth incidents.

I don’t want to get too deep into the trees of the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates kerfuffle (see Patterico for some of the best analysis), but it seems to me that the professor was way outta line.

But he’s a friend of President Obama’s, so he decides he’s got to defend him at a nationally televised primetime press conference and calls the Cambridge police “stupid.” A couple days later, he walks back the statement, saying he’d talked to the officer who made the arrest – who happens to teach a course on avoiding racial profiling – and made a non-apology apology.

On Saturday, we get this from the ever-eloquent top dog.

"I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically," Obama told reporters. "I could have calibrated those words differently, and I told this to Sgt. Crowley.”

Is the public going to buy what he’s selling? (You know the media will.) What impression exactly are you trying to convey when you call someone “stupid?” When he doesn’t have TOTUS to help him out, he’s really not a very careful speaker.

I encourage Sgt. James Crowley not to accept President Obama’s invitation to the White House. He didn’t “calibrate” his words incorrectly, that’s exactly how he feels. Don’t be a prop.

Oh, and I love this line from Gates’ lawyer, Charles Ogletree:

The full story will show that Gates did nothing wrong -- and that Crowley did not identify himself at first, Ogletree said.

Now take a look at this photograph of Gates’ arrest. Unless I’m mistaken, that’s Crowley on the right, wearing a police uniform complete with badge.

Oh, and I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m maligning the president… but he’s a complete moron for not staying out of this issue.