Obama Best Friend: President 'an International and National Community Organizer'

President Barack Obama’s best friend, Chicago businessman Marty Nesbitt, told New Yorker editor David Remnick that he views Obama as a global community organizer.

“He was a local community organizer when he was young,” said Nesbitt. “At the back end of his career, I see him as an international and national community organizer.”

During an interview with Remnick, Obama said America is “the largest organization on earth.”  

“As I’ve reminded my team, the day after I was inaugurated for a second term, we’re in charge of the largest organization on earth, and our capacity to do some good, both domestically and around the world, is unsurpassed, even if nobody is paying attention.”

In his lengthy feature piece, Remnick quotes Obama waxing philosophical about ancient sins and modernity’s challenges in transcending them.

“I think we are born into this world and inherit all the grudges and rivalries and hatreds and sins of the past,” said Obama. “But we also inherit the beauty and the joy and goodness of our forebears. And we’re on this planet a pretty short time, so that we cannot remake the world entirely during this little stretch that we have.”