Critics co-opt Obama organizing playbook

WASHINGTON — There’s a certain irony here.

The 20th-century community organizer who used 21st-century tools for his people-powered White House campaign now finds himself besieged by citizens airing their grievances at 19th-century-inspired town-hall meetings.

Barack Obama’s top legislative goal hangs in the balance, and his popularity is suffering as critics co-opt his tech-savvy organizing methods, tag him as a boogyman and disrupt local gatherings on his proposed health-care overhaul.

Is the groundbreaking campaigner, whose White House political arm is aptly called Organizing for America, being outmaneuvered?

“That’s a fair summary of where things are at the moment,” said Sanford Horwitt, a biographer of Saul Alinsky, the father of community organizing.

“The other side has the anger and the intensity, and Obama’s side doesn’t,” Horwitt said. Harking back to the presidential campaign’s tactics and success, Horwitt said, “This really first-rate community organizing has not revealed itself in the first months he’s been in office, particularly when it comes to the health-care issue.”

The White House and its allies claim the protests are simply a fake grass-roots movement — “astroturfing” — but a USA Today/Gallup Poll this week found that most Americans believe the protesters’ sentiments are genuine.

Still, it’s far from clear how effective they’ll end up being. A majority in the same poll said they disapproved of some of the protesters’ tactics, such as shouting down Obama supporters.

Judging by the jeers and rants at Democratic lawmakers’ public forums this August, Obama appears to be facing a populist backlash from Americans who want no part of the wholesale change he promised as a candidate. The fierce opposition is threatening to further erode wider public support for his sweeping transformation of the nation’s medical system.

To sell his plan to a wary public, Obama is expending a ton of political capital and using a strategy that’s delivered results before — taking his pitch directly to the people during question-and-answer sessions in local communities. He is certain to face resistance today in Bozeman, Mont., where one group expects 500 protesters, and Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo., where demonstrators are all but certain to line the streets just as they did last month when he campaigned in North Carolina and Virginia.

So far, his audiences have been supportive and respectful, with Democratic allies in Congress bearing the brunt of outbursts as they defend his health-care vision during what are commonly called “town hall” events.

The format is as old as the nation itself, derived from informal meetings routinely held in New England town squares by citizens looking to debate the issues of the day and settle local disputes. Today, few if any such events take place in actual town halls, and few issues get resolved. Rather, the events are held by politicians to make people feel their views are being heard.

Supporters and opponents alike use today’s modern technology to steer yesterday’s public forum in the direction they want.

Opposition to Obama’s health-care overhaul is both organic and organized, not unlike the very effort he stitched together during his campaign for the presidency. Back then, he seized on the passion Americans had for change from Republican rule, using new Internet organizing tools to harness grass-roots energy and empower people who had never been active in politics to vote for him.

Since he’s been in office, he’s turned that campaign apparatus into a political organization whose top priority now is to drum up support for health care overhaul and encourage supporters to attend events on the issue.