October 10, 2008
The real reason why Obama's Ayers connection matters
The McCain campaign is trying to focus the electorate's attention on William Ayers, the domestic terrorist who has had a longstanding relationship with Obama. But blogger Neo thinks McCain and his strategists are missing the point.
if Republicans persist in using the approach of saying the problem is that Obama was tight with a domestic terrorist from the 60’s and lied about the extent of his involvement, they’re not going to go far with this. Obama can point—as he has so many times before—to the fact that when Ayers committed his crimes Obama was indeed a small boy, halfway around the world, as well as the fact that Ayers is now a highly respected muckamuck in the education field.
All this is true, as far as it goes. The shocking thing is that Ayers has risen to this level, because:
Ayers is a school reformer in the same sense, as City Journal’s Sol Stern put it, as Joe Stalin was an agricultural reformer.
The unanswered question is how Ayers, with not only his “unrepentant” terrorist past but his far Leftist present agenda became an influential educator. Whatever the answer (and we have not gotten it yet), the evidence is clear that for many years Barack Obama was his confederate and supporter in that endeavor and has covered up that fact. The media is now assisting in that coverup, and the Republican Party is not hitting hard enough at the real issues that need to be uncovered.
Here’s the program, folks, in Ayers’s own words, spoken just two years ago in that oh-so-progressive country, Venezuela:
An idea of what Ayers has in mind for America’s schools was provided in his own words not 40 years ago when Obama was eight years old, but less than two years ago in November 2006 at the World Education Forum in Caracas hosted by dictator Hugo Chavez.
With Chavez at his side, Ayers voiced his support for “the political educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how . . . all of you continue to overcome the failures of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.”
Ayers told the great humanitarian Chavez: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions large and small. La educacion es revolucion.” It is that form of socialist revolution that Ayers, and Obama, have worked to bring to America.
We are seeing now the fruit of that program of transformation in an electorate that cannot—or will not—see what and who Obama is, or perhaps doesn’t much care.
[...]
The truth about Ayers and Obama needs to get out, and we can’t rely on the media or even the McCain campaign to do it.
I differ with Neo's assessment in that I think Ayers' unrepentant stance, his mocking taunt that he's "Guilty as sin, free as a bird!" despite his involvement in plots to plant bombs and kill Americans, does matter. There has to be some portion of the middle-of-the-road electorate that is disgusted by Ayers' hatred for America, and dismayed by Obama's long association with the man.
Sure, Obama has said that he condemns Ayers' 60s-era activities, but Ayers never has repudiated his actions, instead lamenting that he didn't "do enough," by "do enough," meaning that he hadn't put enough time and effort into ensuring that the bombs were planted and the enemies of la revolucion blown to bits.
So, notwithstanding Obama's tepid condemnation of Ayers, the fact that he still considers the man to be a respected member of the Chicago establishment speaks volumes about the Democratic nominee -- and what it says isn't good.
Posted by Mike Lief at October 10, 2008 12:18 AM
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