Josh Marshall says Obama's press conference remarks on Henry Lewis Gates' arrest in Cambridge were "all about a black guy getting on the side of another black guy who got crosswise with the cops."

No, they weren't. I know Josh meant his remarks in a good way, but I actually can't conceive a greater misrepresentation of the sense and force of the President's words. And mind.

President Obama's stated point was exactly that no American--not no Black American, but simply no American citizen--would or should accept being arrested in their own home after showing police proper identification proving they were, in fact, standing in their own home. (OK, who wants to argue with that one?) And that Gates' arrest even after proving such was prima facie evidence the Cambridge police acted "stupidly."

The President did not say the police acted as racists--he said the arrest appeared on its face unjustified and wrong, because Gates was standing in his own home and proved it. The President went on to say that racial profiling and police over-arrests/stops of Black and Latino Americans--a simple fact, as the President noted--cast suspicion even on legitimate stops/arrests.

In short, the President very clearly was not gettin' behind a brother. He (pointedly) was making precisely the same argument that any American would make if a neighbor, or they themselves, were so treated by the police. It's a legal argument, Constitutional if you will--not a race appeal, or shout-out.

Which was of course one sly implicit point of the President: It was not he, or Professor Gates, that was involved in any special racial pleading, if anyone was: It was the Cambridge police.

And that's how this President rolls.