Lots of folks have been talking (angrily) about Wednesday night's GOP effort to make "community organizer" an object of mockery -- see, for instance, Joe Klein, Chris Hayes, Sally Kohn, and the excellent Jay Smooth:
This is all right on, but I think one aspect is being overlooked, one contrast between community organizers and mayors (and others with "executive experience").
Consider: Community organizers are ordinary people who bring their peers together via persuasion and consensus. Community organizers are nodes in a network -- it is almost by definition a non-hierarchical affair. "Executive experience," on the other hand, involves clear lines of authority. Someone is in charge. There's a clear pecking order, and the executive is on top.
Not for the first time, I direct your attention to "Authoritarianism and the political divide" by Jonathan Weiler and Marc J. Hetherington. Evidence finds that authoritarianism, as a personality trait, was once distributed evenly between parties but has now self-selected to the right (though it waxes and wanes in all of us based on circumstances). If you want to know why Republicans spend so much time hitting on issues of group identification and fear of outsiders, it is because those issues "tap, quite directly, fundamental concerns about the proper structure of the family and authority, the need to quell possible threats to social homogeneity, and the need to use whatever means necessary to protect a suddenly vulnerable-seeming nation. In short, all of these issues tap anxieties central to an authoritarian world view."
Obviously this is a generalization, but I think it's broadly valid: Conservatives crave clear lines of authority. They love top dogs; they love winners. They loath and fear weakness. They favor force and intimidation over persuasion and empathy.
The community organizing issue taps directly into this dynamic. However small her town, Palin was in charge. She was the top dog -- had the "actual responsibilities," ordered people around. Community organizers aren't top dogs; they're not in charge of anyone. They just go around talking, listening, persuading, empathizing. They can't force anything to happen. It is, through the authoritarian lens, a form of weakness, powerlessness.
That is, at least in part, the reason the hardcore Republican crowd roared Wed. night when two mayors mocked community organizing. Obama spent his time in Chicago talking, just like he's been talking ever since. If he had any balls, he would have been in charge, right?
Palin’s book spreads falsehoods about clean energy legislation
It’s Getting Ha! in Here: Maria Bamford
Gore on the Daily Show: extended dance remix
Comments
View as Flat
Russ Posted 3:23 am
05 Sep 2008
This is the core kiss up-kick down, cowardly bully type. Conformist, boot-licking success worship, success always defined purely in gutter material terms - whatever is biggest, richest, temporally most powerful, physically strongest.
This is the path of those born without the capacity for independent thought. Being too lazy, stupid, and cowardly to ever think for themselves, they joyously adhere as slaves to whatever idiocy - religious, political, cultural - they were brainwashed into as children.
However:
Obama spent his time in Chicago talking, just like he's been talking ever since. If he had any balls, he would have been in charge, right?
As a strategic matter, it seems the Dems go way too far in the opposite direction, do too much talking. (Indeed, I thought that was a truism by now among those trying to diagnose the Dems' fecklessness.)
At some point, you have to make up your mind who you are and what you want to accomplish, and at that point the time for talking really should be over. It is the time for doing.
So, as a tactical matter, I hope once elected Obama really will be "in charge", will have a Plan and will relentlessly, where necessary ruthlessly, seek to carry it out.
That's where I have so many doubts about him - not regarding his good faith, but regarding whether or not he really knows what to do, and whether he has the fortitude to seek the goal.
Permalink
mreinbold Posted 3:36 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
redpanda Posted 3:36 am
05 Sep 2008
I know that republicans want a debate about who has more experience in order to shift attention from McCain's hypocrisy on the subject, but I don't really care. But they need to be called out on their distortions of fact.
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 3:47 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 3:53 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 4:01 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
jterhune Posted 4:09 am
05 Sep 2008
We live in a corporate-cultiure-complex that teaches us to despise community organizers and praise Economic Hit Men/ Women, while worshipping a table-turner on Sundays.
Who would't be confused?
Jeremy Terhune
San Joaquin Valley Rep.
Permalink
mreinbold Posted 4:52 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
racc Posted 5:06 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
Bob Wallace Posted 5:38 am
05 Sep 2008
Jesus was a community organizer.
Pontius Pilate and George Bush were Governors.
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 6:16 am
05 Sep 2008
Victory in Pattani
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 6:31 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
mreinbold Posted 6:58 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 7:23 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
Bob Wallace Posted 7:27 am
05 Sep 2008
I used to like John. In the past it seemed to me that he was willing to bypass the party line and look at issues with a more open mind.
That no longer seems to be the case. He's now turned from what he was 8 or so years ago to be a "Me too" version of Bush. And he seems to have done so simply as a ploy to get elected.
As I get to know him more I find him unacceptable for the highest office in the country.
Not only has he shown a lack of principal, but he's demonstrated that he's not intellectually prepared to do the job.
After decades in Congress, making decisions that directly effect the nation's economy he seems to know little about economics.
After decades of making decisions concerning America's role in the world he seems not to know who the major players are in parts of the world such as Iraq. He doesn't even seem to know the geography of the area.
After decades of making decisions on energy and the environment he doesn't seem to know even the basics.
(I'm not going to call him a liar over his stance that we can drill our way out of the current situation. I'm going to make the assumption that he's an honest, but ill-informed man.)
Over the last few years I've taken a better look at McCain and found him, while a decent person, to very much less than what we need to lead our country.
We need smarter and better informed.
We've got years of very bad decisions to overcome.
Permalink
Bob Wallace Posted 7:30 am
05 Sep 2008
Just this SOBs opinion....
Permalink
beinformed Posted 7:30 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
mreinbold Posted 9:14 am
05 Sep 2008
Permalink
wiscidea Posted 9:20 am
05 Sep 2008
He was once respectable, but he's allowed himself to be beaten into submission by the Bush administration, his fellow Republicans, and the Christian right. I really feel sorry for the guy. I certainly don't hate him.
What makes me most nervous about a McCain Presidency is that I don't know who the real McCain is. Will he return to "normal" after this? Will he throw off his shackles? I suspect not. Choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate pretty much shows that McCain is a shadow of his former independent self. He's made a pact with the devil and there's no turning back.
Sad. Very sad.
Permalink
hapa Posted 10:28 am
05 Sep 2008
McCain is a shadow of his former … self.
period. i think this has been a very long campaign and he's one tired old man.
Permalink
MAD MAC Posted 4:27 pm
05 Sep 2008
I never watch any conventions. They are cheer leading shows. Real policy, real issues, don't avail themselves until a candidate is in office and has to apply them. That's when reality takes over.
We can understand the general leanings of each man, don't bother going into specifics. You are wasting your time.
I used to like John. In the past it seemed to me that he was willing to bypass the party line and look at issues with a more open mind.
"That no longer seems to be the case. He's now turned from what he was 8 or so years ago to be a "Me too" version of Bush. And he seems to have done so simply as a ploy to get elected."
Of course. What choice did he have? He had to win the party's nomination. The "Maverick" McCain could not do that in 2000. He learned from that. He's not stupid. Had he run the same campaign in 2008 that he ran in 2000, Mitt Romney would be the candidate now. What he says and what he does won't be nearly the same thing.
But whether Obama wins or McCain does, recognize this, there are a LOT of vested interests in Washington. Outside of the employment of military force, the President can't do a thing. He needs a willing Congress. Given that Congress remains a house divided, and probably will be so for the next term, no president is going to be able to do whatever he wishes domestically. There is going to be plenty of compromise.
Victory in Pattani
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 4:48 pm
05 Sep 2008
But the same guy who wrote Sarah's speech, also wrote McCain's speech. Is he perhaps bi-polar?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink