By Bagehot
BEFORE Barack Obama’s rise to prominence, with his address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, your blogger must admit he was not completely sure what a community organiser was. True, Britain had its own tradition of eloquent, idealistic graduates from posh colleges pitching up in poor neighbourhoods—think of Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, home to a string of young sprigs of the Victorian Establishment keen to make a difference, among them the future founder of the British welfare state, William Beveridge. But the great culture clashes of American community organisation, the debates between confrontational sorts like Saul Alinsky and more emollient colleagues, have always seemed a bit alien.