One could call Sarah Palin’s remarks a defensive reaction to those who were dismissive about her own experience in Alaska. The crowds at the Republican National Convention laughed and cheered in response to her sarcastic assault on Barack Obama’s early years as a community organizer.

One would hope, however, that a leader seeks to strive beyond the divisiveness and negative campaigning that Palin embraced during her acceptance speech. It was indeed an effective speech for the Republican Campaign, although it challenged the togetherness and the sense of civic awareness that many consider an inspiring aspect of Obama’s rhetoric.

“Maybe this is the first problem on the resume,” Former New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani suggested, “[Obama] worked as a community organizer.” Giuliani continued the assault on community organizing, demeaning Obama’s service in the South Side of Chicago, and claiming not to know what community organizers even do.

It must be a joke to those who are so out of touch, or so elitist, that they have never worked in a grassroots environment, person to person, to empower the impoverished, the disenfranchised, the discriminated, and the casualties of negligent governance. It smacks of hypocrisy that of all people, our civil servants, our so-called leaders who claim their dedication to the common good, speak of community organizing in such demeaning terms.

It was Mother Teresa who once said, “Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.” Here I now live, in Mother Teresa’s home country of Macedonia, fully dedicating myself to public service and community organizing. I have never felt such a sense of responsibility as I do these days, knowing that I can reach out and improve the lives of the disadvantaged in a way most politicians cannot. The responsibility to reach out and help strangers in need is not necessarily an innate characteristic of human nature. More often, it is a responsibility born in individuals who identify with those whose lives they are seeking to improve.

Obama rightfully pointed out that his work as a civil rights lawyer, a professor of constitutional law, and his years in the State Legislature and the U.S. Senate, were overlooked by his first job out of college as community organizer. Obama says his experience with community organizing is indeed relative for the presidency, responding to Palin’s comments that his work in the community is key in understanding “where I’m coming from, who I believe in, what I’m fighting for, and why I’m in this race.” Obama went on to ask why one would claim that working to improve “the lives of those folks that are struggling each and every day…is somehow not relevant to the presidency?”

It is not easy to come face to face with poverty and tarnished dreams, and set out to improve the conditions of the less fortunate. New York community organizer John Raskin, in response to Palin and Giuliani’s comments on community organizing, noted to Associated Press on the topic that “it’s adding insult to injury. First, to create an economy that leaves out so many people and then to insult people who are trying to help.” It belittles the hard work of those out in the field every day, working to extend health care to those without insurance, to provide and protect affordable housing, to offer legal services to the discriminated, to lower the rates of teenage pregnancies, pollution, or crime, and to empower the disenfranchised.

As I embark on my career of public service, I value my experience as a community organizer because I now know the capacity of one individual to improve society, and the power of one community to change the world. Community organizers like Martin Luther King, Jr. were on to something when they set out to challenge the status quo one individual at a time. Barack Obama claims to have been inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, and it is community organizers like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., who sparked movements that offer us the greatest hope for a better future.

First off, Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton. Having followed Clinton for decades, having proudly watched her strong campaigns (especially to reform America’s Health Care system), her challenges overcome, and the achievements which have transformed her from an atypical First Lady to New York Senator to once-Presidential hopeful, I admire Clinton for her experience and her perseverance. In 2007 in New York, I had the chance to meet Clinton at a DC 37 union event, and I was moved by the passion and grace with which she spoke.

When I initially heard the unexpected news that Sarah Palin is McCain’s running mate, two thoughts went through my head. First, my calculations were right that he would attempt to undermine Obama’s edge by choosing a female running mate. Second, who in the world is Sarah Palin?

In my opinion, she looked the part until she delivered her rather mediocre introductory speech. Instead of starting off with an anticipated presidential essence, Palin spoke more about her husband Todd and her unexpected journey as a once hockey mom to now Republican Vice Presidential candidate. She began by joking that she promised Todd a birthday present, and that she sure did deliver, and McCain seemed to stand by laughing awkwardly. She listed her respectable accomplishments, many of which reflect Americans’ current needs, but it was as if she was interviewing for a job. I sat holding my breath, waiting for a moving speech that could change the course of the Republican campaign, and I almost felt embarrassed for McCain and his downright brashness at having met this Alaska Governor once before choosing her to co-lead America.

Then I had to ask, who does McCain think us Clinton loyalists are? That we will overlook the quality of a candidate and be appeased with any female running mate, whom we all know McCain chose only as an election curve ball against the Democrats? A candidate, nonetheless, who is starchly pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and a proud member of the National Rifle Association. I feel that the conservative, religiously-driven policies that Palin supports hurt rather than help women’s rights in America. Yes, I am proud by how far women leadership has come this year, but it seems that McCain and his desperate party think U.S. women are blind!

Then the next and most fundamental point came to the forefront: How dare John McCain gamble with our future, as Americans, in such an uncertain and problematic time in our history. Few agree that Sarah Palin was the most suitable candidate on McCain’s list to be next Vice President. A one-time Governor of the state of Alaska, heading a whopping population of 683,478, seems hardly ready to take on the dilemmas our country faces in the present day.

If she had McCain’s quickly deteriorating and yet long-term respectability, Clinton’s history of determined achievements, Biden’s foreign policy expertise, or Obama’s heartbreaking charisma, I would think the Republicans have a chance at winning in November. Bottom line, this election is dangerously pivotal, and I only seek reassurance that I’m not the only one out there who feels the way I do.

My lack of faith in our government is increasingly inconsistent with the admirable and yet naive bipartisan belief that the American government’s best interests are always the American people. Even at the worst of times, when administrations like George W. Bush’s have lost all legitimacy, most Americans would refuse to admit that their government would turn on them for personal or political gain. This is not the case in much of the rest of the world, where distrust in one’s government is the result of deep-cutting memories of war, conflicts that most Americans are fortunate to have never experienced, a denial of political freedoms, outright fascism, and/or endemic corruption.

Take the September 11th conspiracy theories for instance. I who have lost all traces of respect for the Bush Administration well before 2001 would have no part in the conspiracies that the terrorist attacks were partially orchestrated by government insiders. Non-Americans were the first to believe that the conspiracies provide us with the frank answers to the questions we all had unanswered. The conspiracies were established as truth by my Argentine, Polish, and South African friends, well before any of my American peers would even consider the painful inconsistencies of 9/11. Movies like Loose Change left my American friends and I perplexed, speechless, and empty: could our government be held responsible for the death of 3,000? Will we ever know the truth?

When one starts to question if their own government could turn on them in a tragedy like 9/11, it’s hard to refute the validity of claims like Putin’s regarding the Georgia conflict. Perhaps my generation is the first American generation to question the genuineness, and to profoundly suffer the consequences of, a government that has exhaustively overstepped its boundaries.