At worst she knew

[beguine]

about introducing a policy to charge rape victims for obtaining forensic evidence. story hereAt best she put someone in a position of power based solely on how personally loyal they were to her (heck of a job, Brownie), and then didn't make sure they were doing their job right

Comments

[anonymous]

Every politician appoints people to jobs they know nothing about. My cousin married a guy who's uncle/grandfather/something was appointed assistant postmaster under LBJ. Not because he knew anything about the postal service, but because he helped LBJ get reelected. I've been told that the Postmaster General was often the president's campaign head, so that they'd have a job after the campaign. It's totally not new.

Of course, being old does not excuse any failures from it.

[anonymous]

Wow, your LJ formatted my comment weird.

Anyway, I meant to comment on your icon. I'm assuming you mean community organization along the lines of what Alinsky does. I particularly support his postulate that the only way for people to get what they want is to go get it themselves, rather than get politicians to do it.

[beguine]

I'm a fan of bottom-up grass-roots political change, yes. Though I believe that he would have argued that much of what he was doing was getting people to DEMAND change, rather than ask for it.

Interestingly, Obama's paycheck when he was working as a community organizer came from Alinsky's former students.

[anonymous]

I actually found out about Alinsky's ideas through political comments on the web (though probably with a different chirality than where you get your politics from on the web). He left because he didn't think he could make enough of a difference as a community organizer. He decided he /had/ to go into politics to accomplish what he wanted.

And that gets me to why I don't like politicians at all: they all want to effect change for other people. They all assume they know what's best for other people, so they go to make those changes. I /hate/ that, from both sides of the political spectrum. CO is such a perfect ideal, I can't see how anyone could think of being a politician as being better than being a CO'er.

[hypersurfaces]

She would make a worse president than Bush.

[beguine]

Yup. She's like him but with extra crazy.

[hypersurfaces]

And, strangely enough, much less experience than he had.

[beguine]

I like to think of her as the meth to his crack.