The following quote is from Barack Obama, not as he makes a run for the Presidency, but from a 1995 profile in the Chicago Reader:

It's time for politicians and other leaders to take the next step and to see voters, residents, or citizens as producers of this change. The thrust of our organizing must be on how to make them productive, how to make them employable, how to build our human capital, how to create businesses, institutions, banks, safe public spaces--the whole agenda of creating productive communities.

The right wing talks about this but they keep appealing to that old individualistic bootstrap myth: get a job, get rich, and get out. Instead of investing in our neighborhoods, that's what has always happened. Our goal must be to help people get a sense of building something larger.

As Mark Schmitt at Tapped notes, the 1995 Obama doesn't sound much different than he does today. Watch his announcement to form a presidential exploratory committee and you'll notice similar themes of grassroots advocacy. At his core, that's what Obama is, a community organizer. He gave up a well-paying job as a financial writer to move to Chicago and work as a community organizer for $1,000 a month. After law school he sacrificed an almost certain Supreme Court clerkship to return to Chicago and organize at the grassroots level.

So how would this translate into an Obama presidency? It's hard to say if his grassroots mindset will translate into feasible policy on a much grander, federal level. Certainly his experience with the federal government in the Senate will help him merge the two worlds. The question remains, is only four years of experience enough time to prepare him for this?

The 1995 article gives a brief glimpse of how a President Obama views the duties of an elected official:

What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? We would come together to form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions.

Will voters buy the idea of a president as an organizer, teacher, and advocate? Or will they prefer to elect another "Decider?"