RUDY GIULIANI AND SARAH PALIN'S superior sneers at Obama's beginnings as a community organizer tell us more about the Republican party—and the spiritual change in this country—than they do about Obama.
The sneers, of course, were aimed at the bases.
It's important to remember that the Republicans have two bases, not just one, and this is constantly reflected in the duplicity of their message.
"Community organizer" was fastened upon by the Rovites in the McCain campaign precisely because it embodied a dual message.
To the millions of the working class fundamentalist right—the voting base of the party—it sounded vaguely "liberal" and "black", reminding them of two things which made them uneasy about Barack. If Barack had been a Republican, they would have called him a worker in a "faith-based charity".
To the leadership—the elites who comprised the majority at the convention, business owners and upper management—it sounded vaguely utopian, weak, and ineffective.
Of course both of these impressions are false.
They were designed to mislead the bases, which gives us some idea of the way the McCain campaign operates, even within its own party. Neither group had the slightest idea what a community organizer actually does—a fact that both Giuliani and Palin's speech writer counted on.
But they may have done us a service, by helping to define the difference between an Obama presidency and what we could expect from McCain.
Although Obama has done a great deal since his work as a community organizer, it is true that he first learned leadership in that context. McCain, on the other hand, learned how to lead in the context of the military.
It might be wise for Americans to consider which style of leadership best suits the president of a democracy:
- Accountability: Republicans have been quick to imply that a community organizer has no accountability. It's not clear whether this is merely ignorance or an intentional lie.
Of course Obama did have accountability in those days. It was the kind of accountability that a board has to its stockholders, a father has to his family, or a president has to the nation. There's no one person you have to please, you have to act on your own, without a boss, but you're responsible to the people you serve, and accountable for the results of your actions. If you're successful, it's probably because you found ways to be accountable in the process of serving as well, without anyone forcing you to.
Compare this to the accountability of a military commander. McCain was accountable to his commanding officers. If he kept them happy, he was doing fine. If he wasn't, he quickly heard about it, and had a chance to correct his approach. He was, by all accounts, very good at this. His superior officers were happy with his service. It was a noble and important job. But it was not the very best preparation for the Presidency: a position which has no superior officers to report to. - Leadership: The Republican sneers are aimed at denigrating Obama's leadership experience compared to McCain's, but compare the two seriously.
Both candidates had staffs reporting to them, but the difference ends there. McCain's staff were military. They pleased him or suffered the consequences, and they couldn't quit if they didn't like him. By all accounts, he was well-liked by those below him, but it's one thing to lead well when those below you know they have no choice but to follow.
Obama, on the other hand, was a community organizer. When you do that kind of work, your staff tends to consist of people like you—people who could make a lot more money elsewhere, but who have chosen to do this, instead. They do not have to be there, and they quite probably have their own ideas about how the job should be done. These are not easy people to supervise. You have to know how to get them to work together, and how to keep conflicts from interfering with the work. And you can't court-marshal them, or threaten them with lack of career advancement. They can leave anytime they want.
They are very much the kind of people who work directly under a president in a democracy. It would be a different story in an empire, but that's not who we are.
You don't just lead the staff, as a community organizer. You must also lead in the community, the way a president must lead the country. And you quickly learn that you can't lead by misleading, if you want to maintain your credibility. You must know how to listen, and how to find ways that people can pull together.
This is something McCain didn't have to deal with in a military command. We don't need another "decider" in the White House. - Reconciliation: The Bush administration, and the Republican Party since the Clinton years, has been doing all it can to split the country into factions: Republicans against Democrats, Congress against the Presidency, conservatives against liberals. It has also done all it can to alienate us from the rest of the world. It has been quite successful at both. Barack Obama has stressed the importance of healing these wounds since the beginning, and lately McCain's campaign has echoed the sentiment.
A community organizer's job entails this kind of experience by its nature. Obama had to get Catholic and Protestant churches to work together for the sake of the community. When you're a community organizer you constantly have to get different community factions to respect each others point of view, and former enemies to work together. It takes a special kind of talent, and a special kind of experience, to do that job.
McCain's approach sounds very much as though he thinks he'll be able to just call people into his office and lay down the law, as he could in the military. He warns those "Washington politicians" that things are going to be different when he and Palin arrive.
But that's not the way Washington works. A president who believes that he can waltz in and start bossing Congress around is either kidding himself or the voters. Reagan, Clinton, all our successful presidents, began by winning congress over, not vilifying it. McCain will not change Washington with threats. Every member of Congress has a constituency back home, and a right to be there, whether McCain likes it our not. He can't court-martial them, or have them fired.
The same is true, perhaps even more true, when it comes to foreign policy. One of the most important roles for the United States on the world stage is that of mediator, preventing conflicts before they become problems for the world community. A man who sees leadership primarily as authority backed by force will not be able to accomplish this. It takes the touch of a community organizer to organize the world community. - Commander in Chief: Republicans love this one. McCain's experience is a perfect propaganda fit. But it doesn't fit in reality.
First, a peacetime command teaches nothing about global strategies of confrontation, about when and how to use the military. (Neither, by the way, does being in a POW camp, even if you have conducted yourself well there.)
There's a reason the founders of our country decided to make the Commander in Chief a civilian post. It's not the job of the President to run the military.
The President's job is to decide when to use force, when to confront—and under what circumstances. McCain's experience in a peace time command gives him no more experience than Obama—you could even argue that it gives him less.
A community organizer, sooner or later, must confront the powerful, whether that means economic power or political power. Obama forced politicians to clean up asbestos in public housing, for example, in a tough political fight.
Granted, it didn't involve violence. But the kind of judgment it involved—the willingness to confront someone who is not part of your own organization, who has their own power base, and the wisdom to know when and how hard to push—is closer to foreign policy than anything a military officer deals with in a peace time command. - The Rule of Law: Perhaps the worst legacy of the Bush administration was its disregard for law—its willingness to ignore the constitution, behaving as though the United States were a dictatorship, or an empire, and its willingness to ignore or twist international law. Bush has treated the presidency as though he were really a divinely appointed king of the world.
We need someone who can find ways to work, both at home and abroad, through consensus, cooperation, and coalitions that are real. We are strongest when there is no need to show our strength.
We need someone who does not need to break the law to do the job. Someone who has already been in a job which had no implicit power, who can work with people and nations without having to use force, who is capable of military action, but does not see it as inevitable. We need someone who has real experience at building bridges, who can regain the allies we have lost, and add more.
We need a community organizer.
McCain has suggested that we keep troops in Iraq for a hundred years—in spite of the fact that Bush promised that we would not do that before we invaded. McCain has said repeatedly that wars are inevitable.
They may be. But a man who thinks that keeping our word as a nation is not as important as having a military presence in the Middle East—in spite of the hatred that will bring us—a man who begins the process of deciding whether to commit U.S. troops on foreign soil with the assumption that war is inevitable, may well be a man who has the wrong kind of experience for the job.
I wish that I could believe that Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani's elite sneering was merely the result of ignorance: that they just didn't know what a community organizer does.
But, given the McCain campaign's record of Rovian deceptions, I can't.
And that is also a reason to be wary of putting another Republican in the White House.
