‘Community organizer’ becomes a punch line

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

ST. PAUL - The biggest punch line so far at this Republican convention in St. Paul: “community organizer.”

Why did these two words suddenly become the zinger of the night at the convention?

The credit or blame for launching the “community organizer” mock-fest goes to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani who told the convention Wednesday night, “You have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a — community organizer.”

He paused and then said, “What?” as if to express befuddlement at that job title.

Giuliani had eloquent body language — a dismissive half-shrug — as he said the words, “community organizer.”

Immediately the delegates on the convention floor burst into laughter and guffaws.

GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin also poked fun at Obama’s work as a community organizer, contrasting it with her own work as a mayor.

In a campaign stop in Pennsylvania Thursday, Obama defended his community organizing: "Why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they (Republicans) fighting for... They think that the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives is somehow not relevant to the presidency?"

Work in Chicago in 1985
Right out of college, Obama worked in 1985 for a group called the Calumet Community Religious Conference to help unemployed people find jobs. According to the Chicago Tribune, the group also urged the city government to fill potholes and put up stop signs.

In his first post-primary campaign TV ad, Obama referred to his work as a community organizer, saying his dedication to public service “led me to pass up Wall Street jobs and go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed.”

Mocking Obama for using “community organizer” as a credential illustrates a Republican strategy of taking what an opponent thought was one of his strengths and trying to convert it into a weakness — like the Republican attacks on John Kerry's Vietnam service in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Video Giuliani: ‘Obama hasn’t led anything’ Sept. 3: In his address to the Republican convention, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani touts the experience of John McCain over that of Barack Obama. MSNBC

What Obama’s fans see as noble and altruistic, Republicans see as a bit absurd.

On Thursday, Republican delegates who reviewed the Giuliani-Palin mockery of the previous night varied in their reactions.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said delegates reacted with laugher to the phrase “probably because a lot of folks don’t have much of an idea of what a ‘community organizer’ just might be.”

And in any event, Kyl said, Republicans don’t see “how it might prepare you to be president of the United States.”

'Whatever that exactly means'
Kyl added, “All life experiences shape your judgment and your ability to respond to crisis. So I don’t denigrate his law experience. He was primarily a lawyer while he was, quote, ‘organizing the community’ — whatever that exactly means.”

Kyl was partly wrong: Obama worked in Chicago as an organizer before he went to law school. He also did some organizing after he returned to Chicago after getting a law degree from Harvard.

“I’m all for anybody who goes to a community and tries to help people who need help,” the Arizona senator added. “That’s a very good thing to try to do. The problem with Obama is not what he did, but that there’s not much of it.”

Delegate Randall Dunning, who served for five years as a city councilman in Garland, Texas, said, “Community organizers are big talkers, but they’re not necessarily big workers. There’s not a lot of accountability when their ideas fail or when their programs don’t succeed. As a municipal official, I had to interact with community organizers. We work under a whole lot tougher accountability structure than community organizers do.”

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