As incoherent as the arguments are connecting Barack Obama to the alleged criminal or terrorist activities of Bill Ayers, it may be useful to compile some of the most obvious counter-arguments that can be mustered at the occasional cocktail party or family gathering where you may be forced to talk politics with Republicans running high on self-righteous anger and short on actual facts.
- Pots vs. Kettles
First, if the McCain-Palin campaign wants to play the dubious guilt by association game, they clearly lose on their own terms.
Evidently McCain cannot remember whether any of his houses are made glass. He was a member of the board of the U.S. Council of Freedom, an organization founded by retired General John Singlaub, which was linked to former Nazi collaborators and right-wing death squads in Central America, and that sought to provide weapons and financial aid for the Contra guerillas in Nicaragua — after the Boland Amendments had sought to restrict such military aid from official U.S. channels. During the later Iran-Contra hearings, McCain defended Oliver North, John Poindexter, Ronald Reagan and others, after it was discovered that, contrary to congressional mandate and the U.S. constitution, the executive branch had been funneling aid to the Contras, financed by arms-for-hostages deals with Iran.
McCain also has connections, and has expressed praise for, Watergate burglar G. G. Gordon Liddy. Unlike Ayers, Liddy was actually convicted of crimes —conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping, associated with the Watergate break-in. He also planned the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, as well as various unrealized plots involving fire-bombing the Brookings Institution, kidnapping anti-war protesters, and assassination of journalists. As an assistant district attorney, he fired a gun in open court, and on his radio talk-show advocated the murder of U.S. federal agents.
In 1998, Liddy hosted a fundraiser at his house for John McCain (sound familiar?), and has personally given over $5000 in donations to McCain campaigns. In November 2007, McCain was greeted as "an old friend'' on Liddy's talk show, and McCain said: "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family... It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."
Sarah Palin is of course married to someone who until 2002 was a member of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP), an ultra-conservative orgaization which advocates succession from the United States of America, and expropriation of public lands. The party's founder, John Volger, allied himself in 1993 with the Islamic dictatorship of Iran (you remember the hostage crisis?), with whom the U.S. has officially severed diplomatic ties, in order to secure a speaking slot at the United Nations, but before he could speak he died in a plastic explosive deal gone bad. While perhaps the party is not exactly treasonous, some of their positions appear at least downright unpatriotic, and rather likely to be construed as unconstitutional, if my memory of that incident call the Civil War serves. The Palins must not see America the same way as you and me. Some have suggested that these connections are sufficient for at least Todd Palin to be denied a security clearance.
Moving down the criminal code to bribery, Palin is also connected to lobbyists with direct ties to Jack Abramoff and to Ted Stevens, and served as a director of Stevens' 527 organization. As for McCain — well, he and his campaign have questionable lobbying ties not just to Abramoff, but just about everyone and everything — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, gambling interests, Russian oligarchs, Ahmed Chalabi, and now we learn even Saddam Hussein. And, then, of course, there is Charles Keating, who gave John McCain campaign contributions, his wife's family investment opportunities, and both of them free jet travel and Caribbean vacations. In what I am sure is case of pure coincidence, McCain was at the infamous meeting with four other senators and no aides where regulators were ``requested'' to back off their investigation into Keating's fraudulent business practices. If McCain did nothing wrong, as his campaign now claims, why do we refer to it as the "Keating Five'' scandal? Keating meanwhile wrote to McCain that he considers them bound together "until death do us part."
- Connections between Obama and Ayers are Tenuous
A recent investigative piece by the NY Times concluded that while Ayers and Obama moved in some of the same political and philanthropic circles in Chicago, they "do not appear to have been close." Ayers was never Obama's close friend or confidant or mentor or political advisor, as has been erroneously suggested by the McCain campaign and others.
Obama himself has pointed out on countless occasions that he was a child when Ayers is alleged to have committed his crimes. He has described Ayers as "somebody who worked on educational issues in Chicago that I know" and "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."
Even William Ibershof, the lead federal prosecutor for the Weathermen in the early 1970s, declares that he is "amazed and outraged" by the attempts to link Obama to Ayers' alleged terrorist activities 40 years ago.
Ayers probably hosted a coffee during Obama's first run for public office, but it apparently was not Obama's first such coffee or campaign fundraiser, as has been claimed.
And what about that board for an education charity? Referring to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, McCain claimed that "Ayers and Obama ran a radical education foundation together.'' This is false on just about every level. Although Ayers helped set up the organization, and attended some board meetings as a guest, he was never actually a member of the board. Obama and Ayers did not run the organization together. And to call the organization "radical" stretches the truth past tghe breaking point. Besides Obama, other board members included former university presidents, governmental officials from the Nixon administration, and other prominent members of Chicago civic society, all dedicated to improving the ailing Chicago public school system, and nothing more.
The exaggerated claims of the McCain campaign on this point have become so outrageous that even the conservative Chicago Tribune declared them "Pants on Fire wrong."
- We Can Choose Our Friends, But Not Our Co-Workers
Even if Obama and Ayers did cross paths in Chicago political circles, and even attend some of the same meetings, the obvious question is: "so what?" Few of us in life have the luxury of a line-item veto when it comes to co-workers. To earn a pay-check, we may have to work next to someone we do not necessarily like or respect. To make progress on issues one cares about, one can attend a meeting of a charitable organization with others, or discuss educational policy with them, without condoning or endorsing everything they have ever said or did. I would think most adults would understand this obvious fact of life.
Did Roosevelt endorse all of Stalin's policies by meeting with him at Yalta? Was Nixon complicit in the human rights abuses of the PRC by visiting China? Do all the faculty at Boalt Hall condone John Yoo's apologias of torture? Please.
Now the McCain campaign is even trying to use similarly ridiculous arguments to bring Michelle Obama into the "cavorting with terrorists" camp, because she and Ayers wife worked at the same law firm.
- The Past is the Past
Not that people should be automatically let off the hook for past mistakes, nor be freed of any demands to take responsible for their actions, but McCain is an odd one to make this argument. If we dare to bring up his poor academic and displinary record at the Naval academy, or his propensity to crash airplines while a Navy pilot, or his questionable judgement on the mission where we was shot down, or his maritial infidelities and poor treatment of his first wife after returning home, or his support for the perpetrators of the Iran-Contra Scandal, or his involvement in the Keating Five scandal, or his completely erroneous claims about the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Qaeda, or his numerous inconsistencies and flip-flops on immigration, campaign finance reform, negative campaigning, financial regulation, the political role of the religious right, abortion, torture, support for the Bush administration, and any number of other topics, we are accused of dwelling in the past, dredging up ancient history. Of course, McCain himself is willing to bring up his past as a POW to try to somehow establish any qualification or to trump any criticism. So only certain parts of his past are fair game?
- What's the Matter with Ayers Anyway, in 2008?
I was under the impression that in the good ol' USA:
the accused was to be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law;
and
those judged by the justice system to have paid their debt to society are to be encouraged to re-enter civil society and re-engage with it in some useful capacity.
Now, Ayers was never actually convicted of any crime, because the indictments against the Weathermen were dismissed due to warrantless wire-taps, break-ins, mail interceptions, and other illegal activities initiated by then director of the FBI Mark Felt and then Attorney General John Mitchell. But now, some forty years later, if the University of Illinois can give Ayers a faculty position and trust him to teach their students, and the Annenberg Foundations trusts him to help set up a charitable educational initiative, should Obama adopt a more stringent standard for merely attending some of the same meetings?
Even retired prosecutor Ibershoff, while stating he wishes convictions had been obtained, declares that he is "very pleased to learn that he [Ayers] has become a responsible citizen." Is that not one of the ultimate goals of our criminal justice system, or are we all about the punishment?
Are we really to hold grudges so long, and because of past errors turn away those who now wish to contribute in positive, constructive ways to their own communities? Does not sound very Christian, does it?
We need neither completely forgive nor forget past transgressions in order to accept present help. Prisoners are paroled. Prosecutors constantly make offers of immunity or other deals in exchange for testimony against bigger fish.
And as crimes go, we have managed to look past far worse than those alleged to have been committed by Bill Ayers. Consider the historical case study of one Wernher von Braun, probably the most important single contributor to the U.S. space program.
In his past he: was a member of the Nazi party, and of the SS; supervised a research and development program of the V-2 rocket, which in over 3,000 launches against targets in London, Paris, Antwerp and other cities during WW II, killed over 7,000 people; acquiesced to a system of slave or forced labor in the construction of the rockets, in which as many as 20,000 people died at Mittelwerk underground factory or the associated Mittelbau-Dora labor camp.
He then went on to: work for the US army, developing pioneering designs for ballistic missiles; work for NASA, eventually as director of the Marshall Space Flight center, leading the development of the Saturn rockets which launched the Apollo astronauts to the moon; and to serve on the boards of Fairchild Industries, the Daimler-Benz corporation, and others.
For his contributions to national defense and to space exploration, he was feted by such obviously anti-American figures as Walt Disney and Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, and received numerous, clearly subversive awards such as the Civitan International World Citizenship Award, the Smithsonian Langley Medal, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Medal of Science.
Here in America, I thought as a rule we give people second chances, and do not define them forever by the worst thing they ever did.