Power Constrains - Why "community organizer" tactics don't work for the president

WSJ Blog ^ | 4-29-2013 | James Taranto

[Sir Napsalot]

"The Democrats have lost on sequestration," Journolist founder Ezra Klein declares .....

(snip)

Reader Harriet Hart is on to something with this observation:

So far I haven't seen any commentary on the correlation between Mr. Obama's training as a community organizer and the sequester fiasco. Community organizers' main efforts are to stir up public sentiment to achieve special goals without implementing any solutions. Solutions are the province of someone else. The present administration has used this tactic endlessly, most noticeably with the White House tour shutdown during spring break and now flight-controller furloughs. This is definitely not an effort to solve problems but rather an attempt to stampede citizens to a desired result. We don't need a community organizer in the White House. We need an executive, but of course Mr. Obama abhors that category of human endeavor.

Saul Alinsky targeted air travel too. In 1964 in Chicago, he wrote in "Rules for Radicals," "commitments that were made by the authorities to the Woodlawn ghetto organization were not being met by the city." The Woodlawners had no recourse through electoral politics--they couldn't very well support Barry Goldwater's Republicans--so "O'Hare Airport became the target."

(snip)

Unlike Alinsky's threat to disrupt air travel, Obama's was at least partly carried out. But like Alinsky's threat, Obama's threat caused the administration to cave in--though unlike Alinsky's threat, its purpose was the opposite.

Power constrains because it entails responsibility, and Alinskyite tactics are designed to take advantage of those constraints for the benefit of the powerless. Such tactics have backfired on Obama repeatedly because he seems not to understand that they are ill-suited to power politics. (Article too long to excerpt. Read more at source)

[Sir Napsalot]

What else does the Obamas know? Lawyering stuff? His short stint as a lawmaker?

Every situation he (and Jarret) faces, it always reverts back to his community-organize root.

[Kenny Bunk]

Lawyering stuff?

Obama actually handled exactly one (yes, that's 1) case. Before that the case was completed, he was offered the choice of permanently leaving the Illinois Bar, with records sealed, or facing a disciplinary hearing. He chose to leave.

When his Bar Application was available on line, it was easier to see perhaps why. He denied ever having used another name (an "alias"). He neglected to mention drug use. (Reckon he neglected to read his "autobiography.")He neglected to mention traffic violations. There may be more to it, but the records are now sealed.

Oddly enough, his wife also is no longer a member of the Illinois Bar. Her case is crystal clear. She was ordered off the bar by the courts when a client committed insurance fraud. Oddly enough though, Michelle, however, actually would possibly have an opportunity to re-apply. This was also the first case she managed more or less on her own. She also had much more actual legal experience than Barack.

When it comes to the law, it appears TMJE, that both of the residents of the WH were, despite high class Ivy credentials,legal incompetents.

Bookmark this. You'll never see it in the MSM.

[muawiyah]

Good article. Alinskyite tactics, if they were workable beyond a dysfunctional failed city like Chicago would be the only tactics ever used.

Same with the Cloward–Piven strategy to overload local welfare to force the federales to create a minimum annual wage. That strategy doesn't work simply because this is a very big country with an enormous number of 'locals' and welfare is paid by the federales anyway ~ has been since the 1930s under FDR (called FDIC for many years).

It is very misleading when advocates attempt to get Republicans to believe that Alinsky and Cloward-Plivan are the only source of rules governing Democrat political behavior.

Much more often their ambition is to win elections so they can run rampant naked through bushels of money!

Adding the doctrine of '47%' to the litany, an otherwise decent Republican candidate can manage to alienate just about everyone in the country ~ including his or her own mother, and probably his chillun'. Life, and economics, and government, are far more complex than a handful of slogans, aphorisms and attitudes.