Who exactly isBarack Obama? So asks the GOP’s Sarah Palin – whom most Americans had never even heard of six weeks ago.
Since Palin began maligning the Democrat as an America-hating terrorist sympathizer, her stump attacks have unleashed a disturbing hatred toward Obama from McCain supporters. A recent YouTube video captured people entering a Palin rally in Ohio, many suggesting that Obama himself is a terrorist.
A McCain-Palin ad ties Obama to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and accuses Obama of “bad judgment” for knowing him. It’s an interesting charge: “Bad judgment” is exactly what the Senate Ethics Committee found John McCain guilty of, two decades ago, for his friendship with S&L miscreant Charles Keating.
Last week, Palin told a crowd that Obama is someone who is “palling around with terrorists.” Note the plural – though Ayers is one person.
It’s time for a little perspective.
I served for a few years on two Democratic groups’ boards, which met monthly. I saw some of my fellow board members socially; I’d even occasionally grab lunch or coffee with one of them, or attend a political event in his or her home. Based on reports, I saw them with much more frequency than Obama saw Ayers – yet it it would be grossly inaccurate to say I “palled” around with them.
With the few who were legitimately pals, I had a clear personal relationship, attending their birthday and dinner parties and vacationing with them. There is no evidence that Ayers and Obama ever had that kind of close relationship or anything even approximating a friendship.
The average American doesn’t do the kind of networking that someone in national politics does, so it’s easy for Obama bashers to portray professional interactions as a meaningful friendship.
The claim that Obama “launched his career” at Ayers’ home is also disingenuous. Obama attended one event there. If Ayers were truly Obama’s political godfather, there’d have many events over the years.
Did Obama downplay his relationship with Ayers? Perhaps. But that may be because he viewed their interactions as minor, given how many events he attended on any given day.
Most important, Ayers was – for good or ill – deemed a mainstream member of Chicago political circles. He has been praised by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley; he’s a professor at the University of Illinois. He was named Chicago “Citizen of the Year” in 1997. One of the boards on which he and Obama served together was funded by a Republican and current McCain supporter.
Ayers simply isn’t the fringe member of society that Obama detractors have painted. Maybe he should be: It’s a legitimate beef that the liberal establishment holds a double standard. An unrepentent abortion-clinic bomber would never get hired as a professor at an elite university.
But Ayers was forgiven his past sins by a wide variety of people in Chicago long before Obama arrived on the scene.
Maybe Obama, like Daley, believes in second chances. Or tolerating Ayers just furthered his ambition – a stance that would hardly distinguish him from most politicians.
The limited professional relationship doesn’t prove that Obama is sympathetic to terrorist activity. (In fact, he has condemned Ayers’ actions.) For the McCain campaign to insinuate that it does is wildly irresponsible.
Now that voters at rallies are raging, McCain has suddenly decided to declare that Obama is a “decent person” (prompting boos) and challenge some attacks coming from supporters. This is bizarre – he and his VP pick are the ones who got them fired up in the first place.
Making the gesture even more hollow, the GOP plans to release a Web video today, “Guilt by Participation,” to pour more gasoline on the Ayers fire
In this latest Hail Mary, the McCain camp is gambling that voters will be willing to view Obama’s tangential ties to Ayers as being as relevant to their lives as the economy’s collapse. In the process, the campaign is smearing someone who has a better than even chance of becoming president as a terrorist sympathizer.
“Country First”? Not if you’re behind in the polls.
kirstenpowers@aol.com