Guest Post - Baldy in a Battleground - Episode 6

The Children's Crusade

My field organizer got fired this week. He's 24. He got fired by the Regional Field Director who's 23. The RFD's boss is 21. And her boss is Abigail Breslin.

Okay, so that last part was a joke, but if you're wondering why the higher up in this campaign you get the younger you seem to be, you're asking a good question.

Not forgetting that Barack Obama is young and has less experience than a person who has been alive since, say, the Civil War, these young whipper-snappers at the top are proving to be a challenge.

Young people are an excellent resource for any campaign for a few reasons:

- They are brimming with optimism.
- They require little to no sleep.
- They have not yet learned the art of saying no for the purpose of self-preservation.
- They are usually not yet established and therefore highly mobile and adaptive.

All good things for a campaign.

Having children run the campaign also has its obvious downsides:

- These kids have no experience in the real world.
- They are brimming with optimism, which goes unchecked.
- They require little to no sleep, so they don't. No sleep equals fried brain.
- They don't know how to say no, so they end up with a workload far greater than what they can handle.
- And since their superiors are even younger and less experienced than they are, they get no help or direction on how to deal with the fact that they have no idea what the fuck they are doing.

Add on to this problem the fact that these are all hired campaigners from out-of-state. They storm into town, all fire and brimstone, but are so young and inexperienced that they don't understand that community building requires more than excitement. Plus, communities like ours don't warmly accept outsiders. Period.

Fuckhead Guiliani, fascist asshole, made a joke of Obama's experience as a community organizer last night at the convention. That Sarah Palin had one of her own, one she's continuing to repeat on the campaign trail.

For now, I'll ignore how foolish it is to make an amusing pastime out of mocking community organizing in the face of lost jobs and abject poverty. Instead, I can't help but think how truly remarkable Barack Obama is. I'm here watching well-intentioned, sincere, and enthusiastic young people flounder on the battleground, trying to do the same thing. I'm also watching them be led by not-so-well intentioned, self-seeking, egotistical young people who are merely looking for a notch on the belt.

From my own experience, which is informed by what I've seen and heard here on the battleground, community building requires a delicate mix of confidence, humility, compassion, empathy, organization, and charm, among other things. The fact that Barack Obama managed to exhibit all of those things at such a young age and with such success is amazing.

It's unfortunate that hundreds of little Baracks aren't running his campaign.

Maybe this is why the right-wingers fear that stem-cell research will lead to cloning. We could totally use a little ObamArmy.