With the talk of Obama’s Community Organizing, I think it’s fair to look at exactly what Obama accomplished with all his work in Chicago. The first thing I looked for was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Obama claimed to have led in Chicago.
The first cite I came across is a study of the effects of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. From the Abstract:
It sounds like it was largely a failure, with only limited success in a very small number of schools that it focused on after the wider program showed no results.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed over 100 million dollars to various education groups and schools. And achieved almost nothing, and absolutely nothing in the majority of the schools.
Why is this considered a feather in Obama’s cap?
Then I looked at the low-income housing projects he worked on. And found this from the Boston Globe:
Obam’s strong support of these projects might be because he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the developers of those failed projects, including Tony Rezko. One of the advisers to the Obama campaign is the former manager of Grove Park Plaza.
So two of Obama’s biggest undertakings were both major failures, and one is mired in corruption. One of the people involved, Rezko, is now under indictment. Obama’s campaign manager has to resign because he was being investigated.
Why does Obama not share the blame for this? He’s been taking huge campaign donations from developers who he procured government money for, and they appear to have either completely squandered it or just used it to line their own pockets.
At the very least, it should be clear that the projects he championed are colossal failures.
Would someone like to correct this and explain it?
That’s reasonable, I suppose. I agree with you that all candidates should stand behind the record of the successes and failures of their actions from age 23 on.
So you surely agree that McCain’s years of cheating on his first wife, which happened when he was in his late 30s and early 40s, are equally relevant.
From age 23 on? The Grove Park stuff happened while he was a Senator in Illinois. The Annenberg Challenge ran from 1990 to 2001.
It also sounds like you’re saying that Obama should be judged to be qualified because of his years working on this stuff, but if it all failed, hey, that was a long time ago. Can’t hold it against him. Is that about it?
Oh. I thought you were talking about what Obama did as a community organizer. Did I misread the thread title and OP? Obama was a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988, according to Wikipedia, or from the time he was 23 to the time he was 26.
I’m saying that that’s how you should look at the record of someone in his early to mid 20s: that’s when you have a chance to get out and try things, which may succeed, but more likely you’ll flounder a bit, fall on your face, and hopefully pick yourself up and learn from the experience.
So yeah, when I’m looking at what a politician did in his/her 20s, I’m looking for what they did, not so much in terms of success and failure, but for evidence in their subsequent of what they really learned from it - how it helped them see the world, how it affected their character and later choices, what (if anything; it doesn’t always) it says about where their sympathies lie and what causes they’re genuinely invested in, as opposed to merely giving lip service to.
That’s fine. But I just want a consistent standard to take back to threads on McCain. I don’t want to hear that stuff that happened when he was 40 was too long ago to regard as relevant, if we’re also judging Obama at the age of 23.
This seemed like an ideal time to raise that point. It doesn’t really seem to need its own thread, if we can take care of it in a few posts here. If it seems to be taking over the thread, I’ll start one on this topic. How’s that sound?
On Foxnews.com you can watch part I of an interview with Obama in “The No Spin Zone” with Bill O’Reilly. It’s about seven minutes.
It’s Obama at his best.
He goes into the most hated program on the most hated network to Libs/Dems, takes on O’Reilly squarely and stands his ground, and is nice and decent about it while making fantastic points.
He didn’t play games and freeze out an unfriendly news outlet, like MCCain just did. He kept to his word, and more importantly held true to his ethic of inclusiveness. Our next President needs to represent everybody. Obama is making the effort.
I suppose Palin’s shot at Obama’s community Organization was fair considering the challenge to her experience as Mayor, but I find both of their activities with merit.
Cite? (“Why is this considered a feather in Obama’s cap?” Damned if I know. First I’d heard of it.)
That was part of his work as a state Senator, not as a community organizer. If you want to say he had a lousy track record as a state Senator, then by all means do so. But this doesn’t say anything about Obama’s record as a community organizer, which is what this thread is supposedly about.
First, let me offer you a quick Kudo. Thank you for not sneering mocking being a “community organizer” like so many of your leaders in the Republican party. I’m glad that you see the value in serving traditionally underrepesented communities and trying to help the poorest among us. So thank you for avoiding the typical crap spewed at the RNC.
Although, to be honest, I’m not sure why you decided to start with the two things you listed. Wait, let me rephrase. I’m pretty sure I know why you looked at those two rather than, as you want to pretend “all his work in Chicago.” And I’m pretty sure it’s not because you’re actually interested.
Because, had you been truly interested, you would, at least, have recognized the difference between what you seem to be talking about: his work as a community organizer; and what you ARE talking about, his work AFTER lawschool, when he wasn’t a community organizer, but rather a civil rights lawyer and professor of Constitutional Law.
It’s these minor “mistakes” that make me question the sincerity of your OP. If you’re interested in his work right out of college as a community organizer, we can discuss it. If you’re interested ONLY in his work with Annenberg, we can discuss that too. But, at the very least, I’d like you to at least have a grip on the basic facts of what we will be discussing.
I don’t consider his work during that relatively brief period, when he was still very young, to be much of either a minus factor or a plus factor. Lots of people are still finishing school or doing practical training then. He did a liberal-leaning public service internship, in effect. No great tangible results would be expected or reasonable to expect.
The funny thing is, while Obama was working as a “community organizer”, he was around 24 years old. When Palin was 24, she was a sports reporter for a local tv station. Funny how those comparisons work.
First of all, the Annenberg Challenge project was a nationwide $500 million (eventually $1.1 billion) reform effort funded by the late philantropist and US ambassador to Great Britain, Walter Annenberg. Chicago was one of eighteen targets for the project, which had specific goals and strategies laid out by the Annenberg Foundation, including a directive to try a variety of approaches: “The Challenge did not prescribe one strategy to remedy schools’ shortcomings. It encouraged districts and those working with them to try different approaches in hopes of discovering different pathways to success.” Cite. So, although Obama did lead the Chicago project, at least when it first launched, it isn’t like he was the High Holy Decider of what would be done about what. There’s a fundamental difference between having the opportunity to enact one’s own ideas, and having the responsibility of enacting the ideas of someone else. Obama was charged with the latter.
Right-wing bloggers are painting the project as a failure when it was in fact a learning experience and an experiment designed to find out what works and what doesn’t. And in that, it was a resounding success, providing the accumulation of mountains of data — such as the data examined by your source. Finding out that something doesn’t work is as important as finding out that something does. Anyway, this notion that Obama marched into Chicago, grabbed its schools by the ears, and set in motion his own plan which failed is patently false.
As I said, it was the Annenberg Foundation’s. It was the Annenberg Foundation’s plan. The Annenberg Foundation conceived and enacted the plan. It was planned by the Annenberg Foundation. The Annenberg Foundation planned it. The Annenberg Foundation.
