Still busy with work and a couple of other projects. So, you’ll have to make do with a re-post from The Economist’s excellent Democracy In America blog.
I think this analysis is very close to the mark. Obama’s reasonableness and his ability to “rope-a-dope” those who would undermine his goals is not only very refreshing, it will also be quite effective in the long run.
In his memoir “Dreams From My Father”, Mr Obama describes how, after six months or so as a community organiser on the South Side of Chicago in the mid-1980s, he and three church volunteers ventured into a bleak neighbourhood called Altgeld to try to get local businessmen interested in providing jobs for the neighbourhood’s youth. There he encountered a black Muslim he calls Rafiq al-Shabazz running an economic development organisation.
When we asked him how our churches could encourage local economic development, he handed us a leaflet accusing Arab stores of selling bad meat.
“That’s the deal, right here,” Rafiq said. “People from outside our community making money off us and showing our brothers and sisters disrespect. Basically what you got here is Koreans and Arabs running the stores, the Jews still owning most of the buildings…”
These attitudes weren’t very helpful to Mr Obama’s efforts to build coalitions for community action. But he found a way to work with Mr Shabazz, letting him rant at the beginning of their meetings, “the veins in his neck straining”, until finally he settled down and started talking about concrete plans for a job programme
