Subterranean Community Organizer Blues

It would appear that the Republicans have gotten to Barack Obama, based on the amount of whining that has been emanating from his campaign today. As you likely noticed, a fair dollop of both the speeches of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin were devoted to mockery of Obama's record and somewhat gauzy record of accomplishments up to this point.

Obama's minions have been out complaining about it in force today. They are especially exercised about the cracks that have been made at Obama's expense concerning his real job, that of "community organizer." A widely circulated e-mail from Obama operative David Plouffe contains the following:

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. …

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

Those rat bastard Republicans - how can they rip on something as noble as that?

Tell you what -- let's stipulate that government is often quite unresponsive to ordinary people. I don't think you'll get too many rat bastard Republicans who would disagree with that statement. If you accept the narrative, Obama's experience in community organizing is what ultimately led to his decision to enter politics. And for the purposes of this exercise, let's accept it.

What did Obama do? If you'd like to know, I'd suggest you take a look at this piece, written by Ryan Lizza for the New Yorker. Lizza carefully reports on Obama's rise through the mottled politics of Chicago. Along the way, he takes the testimony of a number of Chicago politicians who were witnesses to Obama's rise. Among those is Toni Preckwinkle, who represents part of the South Side. From the article:

Preckwinkle is a tall, commanding woman with a clipped gray Afro. She has represented her slice of the South Side for seventeen years and expresses no interest in higher office. On Chicago’s City Council, she is often a dissenter against the wishes of Mayor Richard M. Daley. For anyone trying to understand Obama’sbreathtakingly rapid political ascent, Preckwinkle is an indispensable witness—a close observer, friend, and confidante during a period of Obama’s life to which he rarely calls attention.

Although many of Obama’s recent supporters have been surprised by signs of political opportunism, Preckwinkle wasn’t. “I think he was very strategic in his choice of friends and mentors,” she told me. “I spent ten years of my adult life working to be alderman. I finally got elected. This is a job I love. And I’m perfectly happy with it. I’m not sure that’s the way that he approached his public life—that he was going to try for a job and stay there for one period of time. In retrospect, I think he saw the positions he held as stepping stones to other things and therefore approached his public life differently than other people might have.”

There's a lot more in the piece. The Obama that emerges from Lizza's reporting is a fellow of great ambition, with no lack of self-regard. He has been very strategic in his rise and hasn't been especially careful to pay attention to the job that he has. Chicago politics is Byzantine and often corrupt, but the primary requirement for a successful career in politics in Chicago, besides having a magic surname, is that you do provide a certain measure of constituent service. Obama's community organizing stint came at a time in Chicago when the Machine was out of power and there was a lot of dysfunction. But if you read Lizza's piece carefully, it becomes clear that when Obama had an opportunity to do something about the dysfunction, he was more interested in his next move than in fixing the problem. The truth of the matter is this -- he hasn't left a lot of footprints, either in the Illinois legislature or in the United States Senate. No one would argue that John McCain hasn't left footprints in his career. That was a point Sarah Palin drove home quite effectively last night.

Now Barack Obama wants to be president. The community that he aided is not significantly better today than it was 20 years ago. He's mocked because his record is one of personal ambition first. The question for Barack Obama is not whether he helped people as a community organizer. The question is whether or not the help he provided had any lasting impact. The evidence is lacking; if it weren't, we'd have heard more about it in this campaign. And Senator Obama cannot change the past, no matter how compelling his vision for the future might be.

There have been many, many questions about whether Sarah Palin is ready to be Vice President of the United States in the last few days. In the next two months, there will be many, many questions about whether or not Barack Obama is ready to be President of the United States. And as these two months tick on, Sen. Obama will need a better answer than what he's currently providing.