Supporters of President Barack Obama being the friendly sorts they are, I wasn’t surprised when one of them strolled across the parking lot to greet me, hand outstretched, during the local Organizing for America Wednesday evening bash marking the first anniversary of Obama’s election.

Except the man turned out to be a bleary-eyed panhandler hitting me up for cash.

Yes, I know some Obama critics will draw certain parallels between this and what’s going on in Washington these days. Fact is, David Gray, ever-resilient volunteer of the local Democratic Party, told me he’d already paid the fellow a few bucks contingent on his leaving the party, but the panhandler broke his pledge and lingered, obviously hoping to press his case further.

All this played out under a full moon Wednesday, right behind a nondescript building at North 10th Street and Columbus Avenue. Members of Organizing for America — a national group passionately dedicated to pushing the president’s policies after a successful 2008 campaign to tout the man himself — moved into the building a few weeks ago.

What’s amazing is that, in what remains a heavily conservative, fiercely Republican stretch of Texas, the local Organizing for America headquarters is a hive of political activity. Lately they’ve been coordinating phone banks to rally Central Texans to the cause of health care reform. On Oct. 20, they claimed to have made 1,013 calls.

Jan Forney, a striking, articulate 55-year-old ex-New Yorker who grew up in Waco and worked for the Obama campaign last fall, said the indomitable spirit of local volunteers, working long after the ashes of most campaigns go cold, inspired her to work hard as a “community organizer” with Organizing for America.

“It was just so awesome to see it continue here, that dedication, that passion,” she told me. “The word ‘organic’ just keeps occurring to me. It makes me feel a whole lot better about coming back here.”

While their man has suffered from silly accusations of being a foreigner, a communist and worse, this group remains wholeheartedly convinced in Obama.

That’s one thing that’s unique about our times, and it isn’t all bad. Yes, major issues are being debated, at long last, and some of us have serious doubts about the direction that House Democrats are going, especially in terms of health care reform and federal spending.

Yet, if what we see in Waco these days is any indication, Americans are more galvanized, more politically savvy, far more engaged. For instance, members of the McLennan County Republican Women were at U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards’ office this week, singing patriotic songs and protesting the health care legislation that Edwards has yet to take a position on.

The Waco Tea Party, continually striving to bolster its claim of being a patsy of neither political party, was making its reservations about health care reform known Thursday, also at Edwards’ office. Busy party official Toby Marie Walker tells me that of the 100 or so there, about a dozen informed her they had never attended any political protest before.

“They’re infuriated because they feel this is too much, too soon,” she explained.

Meanwhile, local Organizing for America folks — the group has about 60 core volunteers — plan on canvassing neighborhoods Saturday to tout health care reform, the very day House members are tentatively set to vote on legislation.

Besides the fact that more are becoming engaged by the issues, many are becoming far better educated about the complexities of these issues. Result: Political lines are being redrawn. and new alliances, however fleeting, are forming, sometimes crossing party and even ideological lines.

For instance, Organizing for America regional field director Kelly McDonald told me the other night that she, her colleagues and volunteers share space on Columbus Avenue with their landlord — who just happens to sell health insurance.

I asked McDonald, who grew up in Waco, if the insurance man really knew with whom he was sharing space.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “We’re talking about giving him 29 million more customers, and at rates they can afford!”