St. Paul — If National Review Online could be remembered for contributing one thing to the 2008 presidential election, it might as well be this line from Sarah Palin’s speech: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.”

That devastating line that cuts to the heart of Barack Obama’s lack of experience for the presidency was cribbed from NRO’s own Jim Geraghty. The line was so effective that a day later it’s still causing conniption fits among the Left.

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At The New Republic, Sacha Zimmerman took offense. “Shouldn’t Republicans, along with all Americans, encourage all citizens to be community organizers?” Zimmerman said. “Say community organizing isn’t enough of a qualification if you must, Ms. Palin, but mocking this noble form of leadership in front of people who will presumably be doing the kind of community organizing you’ll soon rely on — getting out the vote, manning the polls, and registering non-voters — just seems wrong.”

No, what seems wrong is that anyone running for president would pad their résumé by describing one of their indeterminate career periods with the bizarre left-wing appellative “community organizer.” Obama’s time working in Chicago housing projects following his college years may have been driven by noble intentions. It’s just that noble intentions aren’t a qualification to be president.

Obama spent three years in housing projects in Chicago and — according to his book, Dreams of My Father — even he couldn’t explain what he was doing. “When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly,” Obama wrote. Indeed, who could say what a community organizer does? The Obama campaign sent out an e-mail after the fact: “With the nation watching, the Republicans mocked, dismissed, and actually laughed out loud at Americans who engage in community service and organizing.” That misses the point. Palin and Giuliani didn’t mock people who work for the betterment of their communities. They mocked Obama for embracing the vague title of “community organizer,” which might as well be the political equivalent of “I’m working on a screenplay.” It also doesn’t help that “organizer” is essentially a morally neutral term and to the extent it’s political it evokes shades of left-wing labor politics.

So Obama himself never did try to define what it was he was actually doing as a community organizer in any meaningful way. “Instead, I’d pronounce on the need for change,” he continued. “Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.”

As Ronald Reagan might say, there he goes again — talking about change. But what did he change? In three years as a community organizer, Obama helped set up an employment office for unemployed steel workers and helped get some asbestos removed from housing projects. Again, these are noble and decent things to have done but it’s not exactly a significant record of accomplishment you can uphold as proof of your executive experience and ability to bring “change in the White House.”

Yet, Palin’s implicit question about what is the true value of Obama’s experience as a community organizer — relative to his presidential ambitions and the media’s collective decision to portray her as wet-behind-the-ears political rube — prompted media oppobrium. Time’s Joe Klein defended Obama’s work as a community organizer saying, “It was, dare I say it, the Lord’s work — the sort of mission Jesus preached.”