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Police similarly are sometimes unjustly accused, Obama said, acknowledging that they do "a very tough job," especially when peaceful protests are overrun "by a few thugs."

Obama repeated his earlier calls for a national conversation between the law enforcement communities and minorities who feel unfairly treated.

"Sometimes their concerns are justified," he said. "Sometimes they're not justified."

Empathy for the other side's perspective has been a defining Obama theme ever since his landmark "more perfect union" speech in 2008 defused a backlash over remarks by his former minister, Jeremiah Wright.

Last year he set a theme for his second term by calling the "empathy deficit" a more pressing political problem than the federal budget deficit. At the time he was seeking to build bridges with Republicans and pass new gun safety legislation. Alas, that political deficit has only grown.

Obama's empathy emphasis often has been mocked, especially by conservatives. Yet his critics have been even more critical when he is not empathetic enough to their point of view.

When he lashed out at the Cambridge, Massachusetts police who arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, for example, the backlash forced him to stage a so-called "Beer Summit" to smooth ruffled feathers.

With tribal sensitivities running so tense, it is small wonder that Obama has been reluctant to insert himself too soon or too deeply into the Ferguson divide. Maybe he is finding a new voice as an advocate for empathy as his presidency winds down.

The dueling TV images from Ferguson symbolized our racially divided self as a nation. They also put a spotlight on this president's uncommon ability to bridge those two worlds. If he can't succeed, many of us wonder, who can?

With that in mind, the National Journal's Ron Fournier, a frequent critic of the president, was impressed enough by Obama's ABC interview to raise an even more ambitious notion: "It would be refreshing," he writes, "to hear Obama argue the GOP's justification for gridlock as even-handedly as he did the cops' case on Ferguson."

What if, as Fournier suggests, Obama said, "Sometimes their concerns are justified."

Would that simple concession make a difference? I'm sure Obama would appreciate hearing it from the other side. Empathy needs to go both ways.

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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.

(c) 2014 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.