"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." Sarah Palin

"He [Barack Obama] worked as a community organizer. [laughs] What? Maybe this is the first problem on [his] resume." Rudy Giuliani

Has anyone ever taken the Strong Intrest Inventory? It's a career assessment that measures interests and plays off the theory that a job that matches your interests will lead to job satisfaction. Strong tried his best to classify jobs into six categories: Social, Artistic, Investigative, Realistic, Enterprising, and Conventional. However, he still knew that some jobs had a mixture of two or more job categories. I had to take this test as part of a Career Counseling class that I took in graduate school. As a student of Psychology and Counseling, I was not surprised that I scored highest on the Social scale of this assessment. What did surprise me was that, although my interests jive very little with the Enterprising careers, I scored very high in Politics & Public Speaking. I scored higher in Politics & Public Speaking than in Counseling & Helping, which is the kind of career that I am studying for now.

Could it be that, while Politics & Public Speaking is an Enterprising kind of career path, a politican still needs to have a grasp on how to help people? I mean, politicians don't govern cheesecake. They govern people.

What Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani don't get about politics is that it's not all about executive power. You have to care about people too. Sarah Palin used her executive power to try to ban books in her local library. Rudy Giuliani used his executive power to decide to keep the Office of Emergency Management in buidling 7 of the World Trade Center. Neither decision was helpful to the people, and yet they expect to be lauded for their executive experience. As a community organizer, Barack Obama learned about people -- their needs, how to talk to them, and, yes, how to get shit done.

Perhaps a mayor of a small town isn't sort of like a community organizer. But at least the community organizer knows what the people want and how to give it to them. Sarah Palin, not so much.

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