So.
It's just so big a topic, but ignoring it is not working for me. Ayers really bombed the Pentagon, U.S. Caiptol building and police stations, and public places. He did these things. Charges were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct, not because he was found not-guilty. The bombs his group made killed people--it happens that they were member of his group, but the bombs were lethal and were set off in deliberately public places.
He and Obama worked together. They did. UIC has all of these radical school board papers archived, and they worked together as heads of different commissions, this is not really disputable. Ayers hosted an event that Obama attended that was intended to get Obama elected to office. In Ayers' house.
It's been a long time since 1971, but how many years makes it okay? Really, this is a concern to me, that time seems to be the mitigating factor making it okay to associate with terrorists. Jim, you called the accusation of Obama hanging out with a terrorist a lie, but I wonder why it is a lie. I'm not saying I am settled as to how I ultimately think we need to account for this odd association--between a bomb-setting terrorist and a presidential candidate--but what I can't do is call it something it isn't. We are a nation that allows protests, and we allow admitted terrorists to become distinguished professors at major univeristies and I think that's ultimately a good thing.
But why is it of *no* concern to you?
6 comments:
It's a lie because Obama doesn't "hang around" with the guy. He is a Black politician from the South Side of Chicago who moves in the same circles with the guy.
It's dishonest because his affiliation has nothing to do with the action that make him a terrorist. It is a completely bizzare set of circumstances that someone who used to be a terrorist gets to be a professor. And it is dishonest to expoit that peculiarity.
Compare: A first degree murderer is admitted to the bar. He joins my Inn of Court. Do I know "hang around with murderers"? Lie:I don't hang around with someone just because I have professional interaction with them. Dishonest: It plays on a peculiarity to suggest something untrue.
Oh, and Oh my God! it doesn't bother me. Obama loves his country. He does not advocate the violent overthrow of the government. None of the associates past life rubbed off on him.
Oops, William Bill Ayers is not Black. My bad. Now who's the racist?
Jim said it well, but I'll add what I think is a couple of salient points.
It's not relevant to me because Ayers will have exactly zero influence on Obama's governing philosophy.
Should Obama have handled it differently? Maybe. I dunno. Perhaps when he learned of Ayers' nefarious past he felt that it was not his role to pass judgment on Ayers, who apparently had been rehabilitated in the eyes of the community. Honestly, I had never even *heard* of the Weathermen until this election. So it was ancient history, moderately obscure, nobody got killed, and Obama chose to let it slide.
Maybe Obama would have been more righteous to shun him, or quit the board they served on together. Sure.
But I don't think it impacts his fitness to be president on jot or tittle, and I think it predicts his style of governance far far less than the Keating Five scandal does for McCain
Here's an interesting take from conservative David Frum:
My pals over at the Corner are very excited by the last-minute attempt to transform Bill Ayers into the Willie Horton of 2008. Well, good luck
In 1988, crime was a huge and rising problem - and Democrats still by and large resisted the effective crime control policies being developed at places like the Manhattan Institute and that would achieve such great results in the 1990s. So Willie Horton, the furloughed rapist and murderer, symbolized in very graphic terms something important and significant about Michael Dukakis the candidate.
But Bill Ayers? Does anybody really seriously believe that Barack Obama is a secret left-wing radical? And if not, then what is this fuss and fury supposed to show? It's like Ronald Reagan's opponents trying to beat him by pointing out that Birchers once supported him.
Link here.
Liam, I think you missed the point a bit. I don't think Obama wants to go blow anything up. Clearly he's just an egomaniac who wants to run everything--fine, that's what they all want.
And Jim, I wasn't really parroting the argument that Obama "hung out" with Ayers. In fact, I think if you re-read my post, I think I was pretty clear that I wasn't on the bandwagon that they were caught french-kissing over the blueprints of the white house and a pile of gunpowder.
What I said is that Ayers really did set deadly bombs in the centers of power of the US, he *did* support Obama to the point of having him in his house, and I'm unable to figure out the appropriate amount of time between one's participation in clearly awful criminal acts and when it's okay to have coffee in his house and accept his endorsement.
If, right now, Obama went to a fund-raiser thrown by member of Al Queda, we'd say it immediately disqualified him from being in office. If McCain went to a fund-raiser by Timothy McVeigh we'd say the same thing. But 35 years appears to be long enough for most people. I'm unsure, bombing the Capitol is pretty serious.
The first part of my response was addressing this, "Jim, you called the accusation of Obama hanging out with a terrorist a lie, but I wonder why it is a lie." The second part was addressing why it doesn't bother me at all.
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