Obama’s Ayers Obfuscation

Although some conservative pundits are upset with John McCain for focusing on Obama’s attempts to hide the extent of his relationship with Bill Ayers — as opposed to playing up the terrorism angle — I think it is probably for the best.  When the ‘news’ media persists in downplaying Ayers’s signficance by characterizing him as simply a ‘former radical’ — rather than, as he is, a former terrrorist (who has expressed regret for not doing more) and current radical — the outrage over Ayers’s despicable acts is diluted.

Whether people believe Ayers was just some nutty hippie, or realize that he was a leader of a domestic terrorist organization, one thing that even the mainstream media is willing to actually report are the attempts by Obama to weasel around his connection to Ayers.  Even CNN ran a report concluding that Obama has lied.

Here is the progression of Obama’s claims about his relationship with Ayers:

• When the issue first came up in February during the Democratic primary, Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod said that:

Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school. They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.

The problem with this statement?  Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn’s children are adults, as is the child of a co-conspirator that they took in when her mother went to prison.  Obama’s two daughters are seven and nine.

• Next, in a primary debate that took place in April, George Stephanopolous asked Obama about his connection to Ayers, noting Ayers’s 2001 statement that he did not regret his bombings and wished he had done more.  Obama’s response:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

• The next step for Obama was admitting that he had served on ‘a’ board with Ayers, still denying a personal relationship:

We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education.

It was not just one board, however, but at least two boards.  Not to mention that Obama launched his political career at a reception in Ayers’s home.

• Obama originally claimed that the reception at Ayers and Dorhn’s home that launched his political career was organized by state senator Alice Palmer, who had decided to retire and endorse Obama.  Unfortunately, she (and others attending) denied that version of events.  Unrelated but interesting:  Palmer later changed her mind and ran against Obama, but he had her disqualified by invalidating signatures on her nominating petitions.

• When Palin first brought up Ayers, the first reaction from Obama’s camp, via Axelrod, was that Obama did not know about his terrorist past:

On Monday, Axelrod said that Obama did not know about Ayers’s background when he attended a campaign reception at his house in 1995. . .  Axlerod stood by his statement on Tuesday. “My understanding was that he, when he went there, he did not know, so I would say after,” Axelrod said when pressed on when Obama found out about Ayers.

• Apparently realizing how ridiculous that sounded, Obama’s latest explanation is that he knew of Ayers’s past, but ‘assumed’ Ayers had been ‘rehabilitated.’

Obama “had assumed” from Bill Ayers’ stature in Chicago, he told the Philadelphia-based Michael Smerconish, that Ayers had been “rehabilitated” since his 1960s crimes. . . .  “Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated,” Obama said.

The problem with this ‘assumption’ is that on at least two occasions, in national media — ABC News in 1998, and the NY Times in 2001 — Ayers and/or his wife made it clear that they had no regrets other than not doing more.

There are (at least) three other points worth mentioning.

First, when conservative columnist Stanley Kurtz attempted to access the records of the Annenberg Challenge — of which Obama was the director, and Ayers the founder — he was blocked at the last minute by Obama’s colleagues trying to keep him from viewing the records.

Second, whatever the actual relationship between Obama and Ayers, for Obama to attempt to excuse himself by repeating that he was only eight when Ayers was attacking the U.S. is pathetic.  For one thing, it is not true, as the Weather Underground was active until at least 1981, when they and members of the Black Panthers attempted to rob a Brinks armored truck.  For another, Obama would have been about the same age when the Manson family went on its killing spree — which Ayers’s wife Bernadine Dohrn praised.  By Obama’s reasoning, that would make it okay to hang out with Charles Manson, since so much time has passed.

The third and final point is that Obama, liberal, and MSM complaints about ‘dirty’ politics and the invalidity of focusing on associations is the height of hypocrisy.  You doubt?  Think about the numerous, and continuing, attacks on Sarah Palin:  her supposed (and debunked) membership in the Alaska Independence Party; her supposed (and debunked) support of Pat Buchanan; the fact that she previously attended a Pentecostal church; the fact that a visiting pastor at her church might have had antisemitic views; the fact that a different visiting pastor apparently believed in witches; . . . the list could go on ad infinitum.  This should come as no great shock to anyone that has had their eyes open, but attacks on Obama (and Democrats in general) are declared bad and invalid, despite the exact same types of attacks aimed at Palin (and Republicans in general) by some of the very same people that are complaining.

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention, in response to statements I have seen made in liberal blogs, that it is not true that Ayers was innocent just because he did not end up in prison.  It is likely he would be in prison still (if not pardoned by Clinton, as others were) but for the fact that much of the evidence against him was based on illegal wiretaps.  Because the evidence was not admissible, the case against him was thrown out.  Lest you have any doubts, he himself said after his acquittal:

Guilty as sin, free as a bird — what a country, America.

What a guy.