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Originally posted by shaolin_Z Thanks for the prompt and straight forward response. First of all, I completely disagree that the institutions worked for most Americans at any point in American history... but that's another topic all together. Yes, he's intelligent enough to actually do the job... but he's also intelligent and "street smart" enough to make the right political connections. He has a record of zero action, that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for one; what social work would that be exactly? There tons of high school and college aged kids who do that stuff purely for building a resume, so that doesn't really mean a whole lot to be honest. You state is as if it's some type of lifetime commitment or something, which certainly isn't the case. It's a nice feature on paper. His cabinet is comprised of the same wall street power brokers as every other administration. How is that change? Being a good public speaker is a political asset, but it doesn't translate in to action or service. EDIT: BTW, you missed the very first question; the one I'm more curious about.

Sure lots of college kids do it to bolster a resume - but remember, Obama was a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law, and had left a job in a law firm in New York City to become a community organizer for $13,000 a year. It wasn't about his resume.

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In 1985, freshly graduated from Columbia University and working for a New York business consultant, Barack Obama decided to become a community organizer. Though he liked the idea, he didn't understand what the job involved, and his inquiries turned up few opportunities. Then he got a call from Jerry Kellman, an organizer working on Chicago's far South Side for a community group based in the churches of the region, an expanse of white, black and Latino blue-collar neighborhoods that were reeling from the steel-mill closings. Kellman was looking for an organizer for the new Developing Communities Project (DCP), which would focus on black city neighborhoods. Obama, only 24, struck board members as "awesome" and "extremely impressive," and they quickly hired him, at $13,000 a year, plus $2,000 for a car--a beat-up blue Honda Civic, which Obama drove for the next three years organizing more than twenty congregations to change their neighborhoods. Despite some meaningful victories, the work of Obama--and hundreds of other organizers--did not transform the South Side or restore lost industries. But it did change the young man who became the junior senator from Illinois in 2004, and it provides clues to his worldview as he bids for the Democratic presidential nomination. "I can't say we didn't make mistakes, that I knew what I was doing," Obama recalled three years ago to a boisterous convention of the still-active DCP. "Sometimes I called a meeting, and nobody showed up. Sometimes preachers said, 'Why should I listen to you?' Sometimes we tried to hold politicians accountable, and they didn't show up. I couldn't tell whether I got more out of it than this neighborhood." But, he continued, "I grew up to be a man, right here, in this area. It's as a consequence of working with this organization and this community that I found my calling. There was something more than making money and getting a fancy degree. The measure of my life would be public service." After a transient youth and an earnest search for identity, Obama also found a home--a community with which he continued relationships, a church and a political identity. He honed his talent for listening, learned pragmatic strategy, practiced bringing varied people together and developed a faith in ordinary citizens that still influences his campaign message. He discovered the importance of personal storytelling in politics (and wrote short stories that refined his style). Later, as a politician, he worked closely with community groups (though not as ardently as another community organizer turned politician, the late Senator Paul Wellstone). As a presidential candidate, he frequently refers to his community organizing, asking supporters to treat his campaign as a social movement in which he is just "an imperfect vessel of your hopes and dreams." Obama worked as an organizer at a time when Harold Washington's election as mayor stirred his hopes and dreams, as well as those of blacks and progressives in the city. Interviews with people who worked with him during that time elicited few complaints--virtually everyone described him in glowing terms, including dedicated, hard-working, dependable, intelligent, inspiring, a good listener, confident but self-effacing. They expressed admiration for him as an organizer who trained strong community leaders while keeping himself in the background and as a strategist who could turn general problems into specific, winnable issues. Loretta Augustine-Herron, a member of the DCP board that hired him, remembers him as someone who always followed the high road. "You've got to do it right," she recalls him insisting. "Be open with the issues. Include the community instead of going behind the community's back--and he would include people we didn't like sometimes. You've got to bring people together. If you exclude people, you're only weakening yourself. If you meet behind doors and make decisions for them, they'll never take ownership of the issue." Obama worked in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, who made Chicago the birthplace of modern community organizing, as translated through the Gamaliel Foundation, one of several networks of faith-based organizing. Often by confronting officials with insistent citizens--rather than exploiting personal connections, as traditional black Democrats proposed--Obama and DCP protected community interests regarding landfills and helped win employment training services, playgrounds, after-school programs, school reforms and other public amenities. One day a resident at Altgeld Gardens, a geographically isolated public housing project surrounded by waste sites, brought a notice about planned removal of asbestos from the project manager's office. Obama organized the community to find out if there was asbestos in their apartments. They persisted as officials lied and delayed, then took a bus--with far fewer people than Obama had anticipated--to challenge authorities downtown. Ultimately, the city was forced to test all the apartments and eventually begin cleaning them up. In his autobiography, Dreams From My Father, Obama writes that the bus trip changed him in a fundamental way, "because it hints at what might be possible and therefore spurs you on.... That bus ride kept me going, I think. Maybe it still does." A recent Los Angeles Times report contended that Obama overstated his own importance, ignoring others who were working on environmental issues; but in the book he's extremely modest about his role and accomplishments, much as he was as an organizer when he refused fellow organizers' suggestions that he embellish the group's achievements. "There was no campaign without Barack," Kellman says. "He was there to get people to organize when they wouldn't organize at all." Hazel Johnson, a longtime Altgeld Gardens environmental activist, says, "Yeah, he's a good organizer. I've got to give it to him." But Obama grew restless and eventually went to Harvard Law School. "He said you can only go so far in organizing. You help people get some solutions, but it's never as big as wiping away problems," says Michael Evans, a DCP organizer after Obama left. "It wasn't end-all. He wanted to be part of the end-all, to get things done." But Obama kept his ties to DCP and worked out of its office when he ran a drive that registered 150,000 new voters in 1992 and became the springboard for his own grassroots campaign for Illinois State Senate. Obama's politics of transcendent unity, which has appealed to many voters, has its roots in his work as a "bridge builder," in the words of the Rev. Anthony Van Zanten, overcoming the gulf within DCP between Catholic and Protestant churches. But this vision of harmony also reflects Obama's distaste for conflict. "Personality-wise, Barack did not like direct confrontation," Kellman says. "He was a very nice young man, very polite. It was a stretch for him to do Alinsky techniques. He was more comfortable in dialogue with people. But challenging power was not an issue for him. Lack of civility was." Obama's organizing history may give few clues about what policies he would pursue as President, but Obama the presidential candidate still shows his roots--a faith in ordinary citizens, a quest for common ground and a pragmatic inclination toward defining issues in winnable ways. Even when Obama was an organizer, Augustine-Herron told him he would be the nation's first black President. Now the Rev. Alvin Love, whom Obama recruited to DCP, looks at his candidacy and says, "Everything I see reflects that community organizing experience. I see the consensus-building, his connection to people and listening to their needs and trying to find common ground. I think at his heart Barack is a community organizer. I think what he's doing now is that. It's just a larger community to be organized."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/moberg

I think it's safe to say that service has been a lifetime commitment - he spent ten years as a community organizer, and has been a board member of a lot of philanthropy organizations in Chicago until running for the US Senate in 2003.

So to answer that first question, the fundamental difference between him and the neo-cons is the way he sees the world and the office of President. He sees the office as a means of serving the American community - they see it as a way of broadening state power.

Here's another article that I think articulates quite well the differences between an ideological neo-conservative and the independent-minded Obama -

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Cass R. Sunstein - "The Obama I Know" Not so long ago, the phone rang in my office. It was Barack Obama. For more than a decade, Obama was my colleague at the University of Chicago Law School. He is also a friend. But since his election to the Senate, he does not exactly call every day. On this occasion, he had an important topic to discuss: the controversy over President George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance of international telephone calls between Americans and suspected terrorists. I had written a short essay suggesting that the surveillance might be lawful. Before taking a public position, Obama wanted to talk the problem through. In the space of about 20 minutes, he and I investigated the legal details. He asked me to explore all sorts of issues: the President's power as commander-in-chief, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force and more. Obama wanted to consider the best possible defence of what Bush had done. To every argument I made, he listened and offered a counter-argument. After the issue had been exhausted, Obama said that he thought the programme was illegal, but now had a better understanding of both sides. He thanked me for my time. This was a pretty amazing conversation, not only because of Obama's mastery of the legal details, but also because many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side. This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years -- a careful and even-handed analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view. The University of Chicago Law School is by far the most conservative of the great American law schools. It helped to provide the academic foundations for many positions of the Reagan administration. But at the University of Chicago, Obama is liked and admired by Republicans and Democrats alike. Some of the local Reagan enthusiasts are Obama supporters. Why? It doesn't hurt that he's a great guy, with a personal touch and a lot of warmth. It certainly helps that he is exceptionally able. But niceness and ability are only part of the story. Obama also has a genuinely independent mind, he's a terrific listener and he goes wherever reason takes him. Those of us who have long known Obama are impressed and not a little amazed by his rhetorical skills. Who could have expected that our colleague, a teacher of law, is also able to inspire large crowds? The Obama we know is no rhetorician; he shines not because he can move people, but because of his problem-solving abilities, his creativity and his attention to detail. In recent weeks, his speaking talents, and the cult-like atmosphere that occasionally surrounds him, have led people to wonder whether there is substance behind the plea for "change" - whether the soaring phrases might disguise a kind of emptiness and vagueness. But nothing could be further from the truth. He is most comfortable in the domain of policy and detail. I do not deny that skeptics are raising legitimate questions. After all, Obama has served in the Senate for a short period (less than four years) and he has little managerial experience. Is he really equipped to lead the most powerful nation in the world? Obama speaks of "change", but will he be able to produce large-scale changes in a short time? What if he fails? An independent issue is that all the enthusiasm might serve to insulate him from criticisms and challenges on the part of his own advisers -- and, in view of his relative youth, criticisms and challenges are exactly what he requires. Fortunately, the candidate's campaign proposals offer strong and encouraging clues about how he would govern; what makes them distinctive is that they borrow sensible ideas from all sides. He is strongly committed to helping the disadvantaged, but his University of Chicago background shows; he appreciates the virtues and power of free markets. In this sense, he is not only focused on details but is also a uniter, both by inclination and on principle. Transparency and accountability matter greatly to him; they are a defining feature of his proposals. With respect to the mortgage crisis, credit cards and the broader debate over credit markets, Obama rejects heavy-handed regulation and insists above all on disclosure, so that consumers will know exactly what they are getting. Expect transparency to be a central theme in any Obama administration, as a check on government and the private sector alike. It is highly revealing that Obama worked with Republican (and arch-conservative) Tom Coburn to produce legislation creating a publicly searchable database of all federal spending. Obama's healthcare plan places a premium on cutting costs and on making care affordable, without requiring adults to purchase health insurance. (He would require mandatory coverage only for children.) Republican legislators are unlikely to support a mandatory approach, and his plan can be understood, in part, as a recognition of political realities. But it is also a reflection of his keen interest in freedom of choice. He seeks universal coverage not through unenforceable mandates but through giving people good options. It should not be surprising that in terms of helping low-income workers, Obama has long been enthusiastic about the Earned Income Tax Credit -- an approach, pioneered by Republicans, that supplements wages but does not threaten to throw people out of work. But Obama is no a compromiser; he does not try to steer between the poles (or the polls). "Triangulation" has no appeal for him. Both internationally and domestically, he is willing to think big and to be bold. He publicly opposed the war in Iraq at a time when opposition was unpopular. He favors high-level meetings with some of the world's worst dictators. He would rethink the embargo against Cuba. He proposes a $150 billion research budget for climate change. He wants to hold an unprecedented national auction for the right to emit greenhouse gases. He has offered an ambitious plan for promoting technological innovation, calling for a national broadband policy, embracing network neutrality, and proposing a reform of the patent system. His campaign has spoken of moving toward "iPod Government" -- an effort to rethink public services and national regulations in ways that will make things far simpler and more user-friendly. These are points about policies and substance. As president, Obama would set a new tone in US politics. He refuses to demonize his political opponents; deep in his heart, I believe, he doesn't even think of them as opponents. It would not be surprising to find Republicans and independents prominent in his administration. Obama wants to know what ideas are likely to work, not whether a Democrat or a Republican is responsible for them. Recall the most memorable passage from his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention: "We coach Little League [baseball] in the blue [Democratic-voting] states, and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq." In his book The Audacity of Hope, he asks for a politics that accepts "the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point". Remarking that ordinary Americans "don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal", Obama wants politicians "to catch up with them," After he received an email from a pro-life doctor, Obama recalls how he softened his website's harsh rhetoric on abortion, writing: "[T]hat night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own -- that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me." In short, Obama's own approach is insistently charitable. He assumes decency and good faith on the part of those who disagree with him. And he wants to hear what they have to say. Both in substance and in tone, Obama questions the conventional political distinctions between "the left" and "the right". To the extent that he is attracting support from Republicans and independents, it is largely for this reason. From knowing Obama for many years, I have no doubts about his ability to lead. He knows a great deal, and he is a quick learner. Even better, he knows what he does not know, and there is no question that he would assemble an accomplished, experienced team of advisers. His brilliant administration of his own campaign provides helpful evidence here. But there is some fragility to the public fervor that envelops him. Crowds and cults can be fickle, and if some of his decisions disappoint, or turn out badly, his support will diminish. Some people think it might even collapse. My own concern involves the importance of internal debate. The greatest American presidents (above all Lincoln and Roosevelt) benefited from robust dialogue and from advisers who avoided saying, "how wonderful you are," and were willing to say: "Mr President, your thinking about this is all wrong." Because Obama himself is exceptionally able, and because so many people are treating him as a near-messiah, his advisers might be too deferential, too unwilling to question. There is a real risk here. But I believe that his humility, and his intense desire to seek out dissenting views, will prove crucial safeguards. In the 2000 campaign, Bush proclaimed himself a "uniter, not a divider", only to turn out to be the most divisive President in memory. Because of his own certainty, and his lack of curiosity about what others might think, Bush polarized the nation. Many of his most ambitious plans went nowhere as a result. As president, Barack Obama would be a genuine uniter. If he proves able to achieve great things, for his nation and for the world, it will be above all for that reason.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cass-...ow_b_90034.html

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