WASHINGTON -- Sitting in the Roosevelt Room with prominent black religious leaders, President Barack Obama on Monday mused about how far the nation had come in the 50 years since the March on Washington led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and how far it still had to go.
A president who often shies away from talking about race is set to deliver his own speech Wednesday from the Lincoln Memorial. One thing he knew, he said, was that he could not fill King's shoes.
"He was discouraging us from comparing him to Dr. King," said the Rev. Alvin Love of Chicago, one of the preachers who were there.
For Obama, King has been an idol, role model and burden since he assumed the presidency. He keeps a bust of the civil rights leader in the Oval Office along with a framed program from the 1963 march, and some of his favorite lines have been adopted from King. But as the nation's first black president, Obama has found that no matter how much supporters may want to compare them, he cannot be a latter-day King.
He is a politician juggling multiple constituencies, not a preacher leading a movement. He is a president on the verge of a new war in the Middle East, not a peace activist extolling nonviolence. He has spent nearly five years in the White House wrestling with his own identity and the essential tension between his barrier-breaking role and his fundamental desire to be judged like any other president.
After a first term in which he often disappointed supporters by not talking more about race, Obama is now speaking more, and taking action, on issues like income inequality, voting rights and criminal justice. Freed from most of the urgent crises he inherited, and the imperative of winning re-election, he at times seems liberated to give voice to causes that have animated his time in public life.
But he still seeks a balance. The nation's attention will be drawn to his speech Wednesday, but the Roosevelt Room meeting Monday and an East Room reception Tuesday night were closed to the media. As Obama talks about issues historically tied to race, he often frames them in terms of class, economics and opportunity, aiming to speak for a broader audience than King did in 1963.
"He sees it as a very different role at a very different period of time," said Valerie Jarrett, his close friend and senior adviser. "Martin Luther King was a preacher, a civil rights leader."
Obama often says he "stands on their shoulders," she added, but "he felt the responsibility to pick up the baton, not as a civil rights leader but as a president of the United States."
That means that he does not often share a public stage with the Rev. Al Sharpton. But Sharpton was among those at the Roosevelt Room meeting and at a private session with the president weeks earlier.
Sharpton said Obama should not be equated with civil rights pioneers.
"In the African-American community and in the media they project him as the new Martin Luther King," he said in an interview. "But he's the new John Kennedy. A president shouldn't dream. A president should legislate and guide."
Yet others remain disillusioned by what they see as Obama's failure to bring meaningful change. Tavis Smiley, the radio host, said the president has been "timid" and "almost silent" on the very issues that King addressed.
"If you're not going to address racism, if you're not going to address poverty, if you're not going to address militarism, if you're going to dance around all three of them, then you're not doing justice to Dr. King, and you might as well stay home," Smiley said in an interview.
Smiley is a sore subject in the West Wing, where presidential advisers bristle at his criticism. They argue that Obama is committed to such issues, noting that he got his start as an organizer working in poor black communities. They point to his speech on race during the 2008 campaign and his speech on inequality in Osawatomie, Kan., in 2011.
But they acknowledge that choice and circumstance have put more focus on such issues in Obama's second term. In the days after his re-election, aides said that Obama told them he wanted to overhaul criminal justices policies that have disproportionately affected young black men. He also said he wanted to focus more on income inequality, and he used his inaugural address to pledge to fight what he saw as restrictions on voting rights.
Alan Krueger, until recently the chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said that Obama's health care plan would go a long way to reducing disparities, but that Obama is freer now to address such issues because the financial crisis of his first term has abated.
"We first had to make sure the system was sound," Krueger said. "Nothing else would work if we were still collapsing."
As much as he talks about being a uniter, Obama has proved to be a polarizing figure across racial lines. While 89 percent of African-Americans approve of his job performance, just 34 percent of whites agree, according to Gallup polling. And so he tries to frame issues in race-neutral terms.
As he opened a series of speeches on the middle class in Galesburg, Ill., last month, he recalled that the March on Washington was also about jobs.
"When you think about the coalition that brought about civil rights, it wasn't just folks who believed in racial equality," he said. "It was people who believed in working folks having a fair shot."
Outside events have also forced race back into the spotlight, and onto the Obama agenda. After the Supreme Court overturned part of the Voting Rights Act, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. went to court seeking to use other elements of the law to challenge a Texas statute. The Trayvon Martin case in Florida led Obama to make a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room to talk about the sting of being trailed around in stores as a young black man.
After that, Holder issued an order intended to avoid long mandatory prison terms for low-level drug offenses, and Obama plans to seek legislation to rewrite sentencing laws. "Part of that focus just by definition is on race because of the sheer statistical, disproportionate numbers of African-American men who are impacted by the criminal justice system," said Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel. "But I would say that race is not the focus of this effort at all. It's more the byproduct."
Instead, she said, "the focus is more about disparity" and whether government is being proportionate in punishment.
Critics like Smiley said they admired the comments on Martin and actions on voting rights and prison sentencing. But they asked why it took so long.
"He was not out front on the issue, which is too often the case," Smiley said. "When it comes to race and poverty, he is reactive, not proactive."
Some supporters agreed that the Martin case prompted Obama to address the topic, and that he rose to the occasion.
"What we're really seeing more," said Love, the pastor of Lilydale First Baptist Church in Chicago, "is basically him speaking out of his heart on those issues."
By PETER BAKER
The New York Times