PrintAugust 24, 2009
A Presidential Learning Moment
The chaos surrounding proposed healthcare legislation offers President Obama the opportunity for a learning moment. The question is: What insight, if any, will he glean from it?Barack Obama is educated in the street skills of an inner city community organizer. In that venue, he didn't focus on the plight of a particular constituency in distress -- not on the male alcoholic street people, not on the drug addicted, nor on abused women, nor unwed teenage mothers without shelter. Instead he aimed to organize a community to push for asbestos removal, to advocate a local job-training office, to push for potholes to be filled and stop signs put up. The scope of his focus testifies to a fundamental naïveté, perhaps attributable to his youth. Aim small, hit small. Aim wide, miss wide. His disappointment was inevitable.In 1985, Obama was hired as a 23-year-old community organizer in Chicago. According to a March 30, 2008 Chicago Tribune article, "The more Obama worked as...(Read Full Article)
