Obama: Still the Alinskyite

Here’s my take on the puzzle of Obama’s leadership style. Obama is still every inch the Alinskyite organizer. He talks about uniting, even as he deliberately polarizes. He moves incrementally toward radical left goals, but never owns up to his ideology. Instead, he tries to work indirectly, by way of the constituencies he seeks to manipulate.

“Leading from behind” is classic Alinskyite strategy. The idea is for the organizer to find out what the people he’s organizing want, give them enough of that to gain authority and control, then slowly and quietly push the group in his ideological direction, all the while making it seem as though the plan is what the people themselves have asked for. Obama used to literally lead from behind, by stage-managing his group’s protests from the back of the room, while the ostensible leaders took charge on stage. That is what Alinskyite organizers do.

Alinskyite organizers are tough when facing down the “enemy” (their word), but subtle, stealthy, and incremental when dealing with the members of their own group. Above all, they are never openly ideological. Everything is portrayed as pragmatism.

The trouble with Obama’s Alinskyite leadership style is that he’s trying to adapt it to the presidency, a role it was never designed for. When he tries classic Alinskyite polarization, he’s treating people he’s supposed to be leading as his enemies. When he tries to bring about leftist results under the guise of a neutral pragmatism, he disappoints his base, which desperately wants him to turn his eloquence to the task of persuading the country of their principles.

Obama is a bad negotiator because Alinskyite’s don’t negotiate, they intentionally polarize. As for their own groups, here they try to placate all factions and hide their own goals. That about describes Obama’s performance on the debt deal, which included a dollop of both of these stances.

Read More at National Review  By Stanley Kurtz, National Review