Goodman: Obama becomes ‘living bridge’ between cultures

You could almost hear the world’s collective sigh of relief. This year’s U.S. presidential election was a global event in every sense. Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, represents to so many a living bridge — between continents and cultures. Perhaps the job that qualified him most for the presidency was not senator or lawyer, but the one most vilified by his opponents: community organizer, on the South Side of Chicago. As Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin mocked: “This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn’t just need an organizer.”

But perhaps that’s just what it needs. Obama achieved his decisive electoral victory through mass community organizing, on the ground and online, and an unheard of amount of money. It was an indisputably historic victory: the first African-American elected to the highest office in the United States. Yet community organizing is inherently at crosscurrents with the massive infusion of campaign cash, despite the number of small donations that the Obama campaign received.

Sen. Obama rejected public campaign financing (sealing that policy’s fate) and was flooded with cash, much of it from corporate donors. Those powerful, moneyed interests will want a return on their investment.

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