Holes In Thoughts: Organizing a Community

Friday, October 31, 2008

Organizing a Community

I've been reading the posts on 538.com regarding how the presidential campaigns have been run with intense interest. In particular, today's post paints a vivid contrast in volunteer enthusiasm. In the article, there is an implied correlation between the enthusiasm of the effort and the amount of power and trust the volunteers are given.

With the McCain campaign, few (if any) volunteers are given enough rope to so much as talk to reporters, for fear of going off-message. Obama's campaign, on the other hand, gives their volunteers guides but are otherwise given free reign to organize, call, and knock on doors. Sometimes this backfires on the Obama campaign. A long while ago, during the primaries, there was a volunteer with a Che Guevara poster hanging up, and more recently, an Obama caller did some drinking and dialing.

Although -- frankly, that audio is awesomely hilarious!

But the payoff is huge: Every town in America has a slew of Obama supporters creating meetings, doing phone bank parties, and canvassing neighborhoods. 538's correspondents have had a hard time just finding McCain volunteers, while Obama supporters are up late every night in houses and offices across the nation.

The conservative ideal is for people to have the power and freedom to guide their own lives without government interference. It's amusing and ironic that the Democratic candidate is running his campaign in such a grass-roots manner.

All of this is background information for a startling conclusion I came up with while reading that 538 article (appropriately called "The Big Empty"): Obama has run his campaign like a community organizer. That much-ridiculed term, which has served as a talking point and particularly ridiculed as resume padding is going to win him the election.

The role of the President is the most mercurial of the 3 branches of the U.S. Government, and its power and stature has ebbed and flowed through the centuries of our nation. But at the moment, I would say that its role is not unlike that of a community organizer: To develop and implement programs that help the U.S. help itself. Many of the most famous Presidential Programs are community programs writ large: Just Say No, The President's Challenge, and so on.

I've maintained for a while now that the power of an Obama presidency lies in his ability to get Americans to help America. Hopefully he will be enough of a centrist to allow those he inspires to do the heavy lifting.

Labels: community, government, Obama, people, politics

posted by Steve @ 12:23 PM

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