So, What Does A Community Organizer Do, Anyways?
Byron York, of the National Review, wrote an impressive article that takes an in-depth look at Obamas three whole years as a community organizer. Read the entire article – it’s very revealing. It pretty much shows what we’ve all suspected – no one really knows what a community organzier really does….not even Obama himself.
What Did Obama Do As A Community Organizer?
And is it really a qualification to be president?
By Byron York
When he left for law school, Obama wondered what he had accomplished as an organizer. He certainly had some achievements, but he did not ” perhaps could not ” concede that there might be something wrong with his approach to Chicago’s problems. Instead of questioning his own premises, he concluded that he simply needed more power to get the job done. So he made plans to run for political office. And in each successive office, he has concluded that he did not have enough power to get the job done, so now he is running for the most powerful office in the land.
And what if he gets it? He’ll be the biggest, strongest organizer in the world. He’ll dazzle the country with his message of hope and possibility. But we shouldn’t expect much to actually get done.
September 9, 2008 - 07:31 AM on September 9th, 2008
From bet of the web: http://online.wsj.com/article/best_of_the_web_today.html
TNR’s John Judis(http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2e0a7836-b897-4155-864c-25e791ff0f50) tracked down Jerry Kellman, who in 1985 “hired Obama to organize residents of Chicago’s South Side.” Kellman describes a conversation the two “community organizers” had at a conference on “social justice” in October 1987:
“[Obama] wanted to marry and have children, and to have a stable income,” Kellman recalls.
But Obama was also worried about something else. He told Kellman that he feared community organizing would never allow him “to make major changes in poverty or discrimination.” To do that, he said, “you either had to be an elected official or be influential with elected officials.” In other words, Obama believed that his chosen profession was getting him nowhere, or at least not far enough. . . .
And so, Obama told Kellman, he had decided to leave community organizing and go to law school.
Another way of putting this might be that Obama left community organizing because he wanted a job in which he had actual responsibilities (and, of course, earned more money).
But Obama did not decide only that “community organizing” was not for him. Judis reports the future senator took part in a September 1989 symposium in which he “rejected the guiding principles of community organizing: the elevation of self-interest over moral vision; the disdain for charismatic leaders and their movements; and the suspicion of politics itself.” Later, Obama “would begin to construct a political identity for himself that was not simply different from his identity as a community organizer–but was, in fact, its very opposite.”
September 9, 2008 - 09:53 AM on September 9th, 2008
A reluctant community organizer? haha
My husband said to me this morning, “Obama is hype. He’s a bubble with a posse. He is an illusion. I don’t think anyone is ever, really fully prepared for the job of President of the United States – - but Obama is a whole lot of hot air with not much substance, at all.”
I think the voters are figuring that out, as well….the polls are showing it.
September 9, 2008 - 10:12 AM on September 9th, 2008
The best thing Obama ever had going for him was that he was new, fresh, unknown, an outsider. The more he acts and looks like the same old same old, the more he loses. And it is not going to come back.
By same old same old I mean the same two-faced, doublespeak, lying manipulating chameleon politician. The Klintons could get away with it because they were slicksters. Obama doesn’t get away with it; with his gaffes and inability to do it on the fly, he just looks phony.
September 9, 2008 - 10:14 AM on September 9th, 2008
It is noble to want to change a community for the better. What sticks out in your latest post is the common theme of Obama’s life..he wants it, and he wants it now, but he wants to sidestep the hard steps. He gets bored(yes he said that as he and Hillary were in the midst of a bitter battle and he hadn’t yet gotten the nomination) and moves on to something else. He had a theme going Judgment to Lead ..until the public found out that he doesn’t have the best judgment.