Talk about taking a lemon and making lemonade out of it.

Although the drink of choice at President Obama's little lawn party featured stronger stuff — except for the teetotaler vice president — the host managed to turn a political fiasco into a public relations coup.

The proprietor of the White House Pub, who had ruffled the law-enforcement community by saying a white cop had acted "stupidly" in arresting a black Harvard professor forcing entry into to his own home, bounced back with his invitation to them for a beer.

The photo of two white guys downing mugs of suds with two black guys while holding what appeared to be a civilized conversation in the host's backyard, more formally known as the Rose Garden, was a stroke of theatrical genius.

Reporters who had fed on the heavy diet of racial conflict without so much as a beer chaser for several days were reduced to gawking out of hearing range. It was akin to movie critics deposited in the balcony to watch a silent film.

The mood of sweet reasonableness that Obama and his media gurus sought to convey was easily achieved. The president in a post-party statement thanked his guests, Prof. Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge police, for joining him "for a friendly, thoughtful conversation." He said the event was nothing more than "having a drink at the end of the day and hopefully giving people an opportunity to listen to each other."

In return, the gracious guests responded in kind. Crowley said of himself and Gates: "Two gentlemen agreed to disagree on a particular issue." Gates, speaking through his lawyer, benignly observed that "everybody left with the sense that we learned some things and we can make important changes."

It wasn't said who learned what. But it's safe to surmise that Obama learned not characterize a man in blue as acting "stupidly," and that Gates learned not to jimmy the door even in his own home. As for Crowley, perhaps he learned anew the perils of perceived racial profiling.

In any event, the whole show ended with Crowley and Gates agreeing to talk again, by phone or in person, though not likely at the same watering hole, or with the same referees. The affair was an illustration of Obama's deft touch in putting out a minor political fire while addressing much more important policy blazes around him.

The episode did not go without the inevitable poll-taking to determine how much the president was "hurt" by the whole business.

The Pew Center for the People and the Press reported that Obama's popularity with white voters had fallen 7 percent after his "stupidly" remark at a news conference, and that 45 percent of whites in a subsequent phone survey disapproved of his handling of the Gates affair, to only 22 percent approving.

There were, clearly, other things going on that could have accounted for Obama's slippage, specifically the fight going on over his costly and ambitious plans for health-care reform. Not only have Republicans been screaming "Socialism!" at every opportunity; many conservative Democrats have assailed the projected costs and reach of the reforms, as liberal Democrats lament that they won't go far enough.

But one thing graphically illustrated in all this has been Obama's personal talent for seeming to be unflappable, whether he genuinely is or not. His repeated reference to the major crises he has inherited from the previous Republican administration, along with major new initiatives he has declined to put on hold, is a bid for more time and patience from the American people.

He continues to argue that the departed Bush and Co. put the country into such a deep hole with its foreign policy adventures, and with neglect of the high-tech banditry perpetrated on Wall Street, that it will take a long time to climb out. He is betting voters will give him more slack, at least until the congressional elections next year.