Obama can't be community organizer for the world | Washington Examiner

Obama can't be community organizer for the world | Washington Examiner: "A lot of observers are having trouble figuring out the philosophical underpinnings of Barack Obama's foreign policy. How does the president see America's place in the world? How will he use American power? How much does he care about such things?

There are no good answers at the moment, but there is a new theory going around: Obama approaches foreign affairs as he would neighborhood issues.

'President Obama is applying the same tools to international diplomacy that he once used as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side,' claims a new analysis in The Washington Post. As such, Obama is 'constructing appeals to shared interests and attempting to bring the government's conduct in line with its ideals.'

When he was a community organizer, the Post notes, Obama 'worked to identify the common interests' of neighborhoods that had been hit by hard economic times. That required a lot of patience, and today he is showing that same patience 'in regard to reviving Middle East peace talks or reaching out to Iran.' He's also 'cultivating a lower profile than the other parties involved,' as he did in Chicago.

Perhaps Obama is, in fact, drawing on his organizing experience in approaching foreign affairs. But what's lost in the theorizing is this: What does that experience tell us about Obama himself? And is there anything in his time as a community organizer that could possibly provide a useful model for conducting foreign policy?"