Obama's background as a community organizer isn't an undercovered subject, but there's been curiously little attention paid to how it'll impact his potential presidency. This piece by Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier helps redress that a bit, and is worth a read. I'd add that the larger impact may actually come from his campaign: The Obama campaign has proven, again, the importance of good, deep, field in elections, and has started training a new generation of sophisticated organizers who'll be in Democratic politics for quite some time. That could be huge. Additionally, if Obama is elected, expect community organizing to be flooded with talented new recruits who decide to follow Obama's example for getting involved in social change. Generally, the folks I know who want to go into politics either work on campaigns or get a law degree. Both, as far as I can tell, tend to be wastes of time, and the law route generally takes folks out of social change all together. If community organizing emerged as a viable path, that would probably, on a micro level, do more to actually create change than most of the policies we're talking about in this campaign.
