First, the kind of thing Obama did as a community organizer isn’t really the sort of thing envisioned in, say, Catholic principles of subsidiarity (or in Republican ideas of small government). The idea there is to build strong communities that help solve problems among themselves. Whereas community organizers, as I understand it, seem mainly to encourage people to agitate for the government to fix more of their problems. That’s a pretty big difference.

But second, I don’t think people would sneer at Obama’s work as a community organizer if his campaign hadn’t been trying to make it sound like some kind of major qualification for executive office. It’s fine to have done service to communities, and it’s even okay to talk about it or let your campaign use it a little bit as general, anecdotal-type evidence of your having been a good, socially concerned sort of guy from a young age. But socially concerned people don’t necessarily make good executives, and insofar as Obama’s work as a community organizer is being trotted out in response to criticisms about his inexperience, I do think that’s pretty bogus, and a reasonable target for Republican jokes.

Honestly, the more the Obama campaign tries to polish up his resume, the better I feel about myself. Obama’s an amazing individual because he has some years of community service under his belt, as well as an Ivy League degree. Hey cool… I have those things! Elect me!

I think you’re right that we should bear in mind, when evaluating his work as a community organizer, that he was still very young. However, I must object to one little thing that you said, or at least enter a proviso. Age and experience can lead to wisdom. They don’t necessarily.

You bring up a good point though, Clara, in mentioning that Obama, for all his talk on bringing us together, will have to make some enemies. Ideally, these enemies would be those whose corporate interests have superseded the common dignity of man and the Jewish Zionists and increasingly Christian Evangelicals who control our foreign policy. Unfortunately, Obama has not made these types of issues a point of his campaign. In fact, he appears to be another great friend to AIPAC.

I thought the article you link to from the National Review was fair for the most part, except, you have to realize that Obama did the organizing when he was 24-27 years old. With age comes not only experience and therefore, wisdom, but a legitimacy in the eyes of others that a 24 year old black kid does not really get the advantage of having.