Category | Op Ed

Terrorism and the Election Day dilemma

Published on October 14, 2008 by The Sentinel

    Is anyone really surprised that the McCain campaign is finally
hitting Barack Obama about his connections with domestic terrorist Bill
Ayers?

    We are three weeks away from Election Day and other than McCain’s web advertisement about Ayers, he has been silent on Obama’s long list of shady connections.

    But unlike Obama, McCain will have to push the issue, because the media will not fully investigate these connections and have shown how clearly in the tank they are for Obama. Lately, the Internet and newspapers have been littered with stories about people at McCain/Palin rallies yelling slurs and cursing Obama, but, in one of the most blatant examples of media bias in this election, it wasn’t until this month that a large media outlet besides the Chicago papers, the New York Times, covered the Bill Ayers and Obama connection.

    The connection should matter to voters in this election because it points precisely to Senator Obama’s judgement and ideology. Obama launched his political career running for the State Senatea in the Ayer’s household, and sat on the board of an education foundation in Chicago. It’s not uncommon for politicians to do questionable things in hopes of getting elected, but when you promise “new politics” against the old Washington grain, then you have to be held to a higher standard.

    ‘’I don’t regret setting bombs,’’ Bill Ayers said in an interview with New York Times published on September 11, 2001. ‘’I feel we didn’t do enough.’’  If that was a quote from an abortion clinic bomber who had similar connections with John McCain, this election would have been over months ago. Instead it was a radical member of the New Left movement that plagued this country in the 1960s and 1970s that has been largely forgiven in the far-left sanctuary that is the Hyde Park area of Chicago.

    The fundamental question that goes with this connection is one I asked last Thursday at the mock presidential debate, and it is based on an analogy to consider. How many unrepentant rapists do you know that said they didn’t rape enough? Are you friendly with this person? I’m not claiming that Obama supports his behavior, he has denounced it soundly, but his connection with Ayers in Chicago shows that he wasn’t horribly repulsed by it either.

    Some of the Chicago political players steadfastly support Ayers and Obama’s connections with him. Linda Lenz, founder and publisher of Catalyst Chicago, wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times in August that, “Whatever one thinks of Ayers’ actions 40 years ago, there is nothing to condemn, and much to admire, about his leadership and commitment over the past 20 years in making schools better places to teach and learn. And there is nothing to condemn, and much to applaud, in Obama’s close association with those efforts.”  It’s an interesting line of argument which requires the past to be completely forgotten. Which is basically like saying that if Hitler survived World War II and went on to work for education reform we would have to praise him regardless of what he did before.

    But the Ayers connection shows more than lack of judgment on the part of Obama: it clearly fleshes out his ideology. Ben Smith of Politico wrote about Hyde Park politics in February noting that, “It’s also a scene whose liberal ideological features — while taken for granted by the Chicago press corps that knows Obama best — provides a jarring contrast with Obama’s current, anti-ideological stance.” 

    Obama represented a very liberal district in Chicago, and was unabashed in his ideology before running on a national ticket. Smith also pointed out that, “A questionnaire from his 1996 campaign indicated more blanket opposition to the death penalty, and support of abortion rights, than he currently espouses. He spoke in support of single-payer health care as recently as 2003.”

    Undoubtedly, Obama and his supporters don’t want to talk about this connection and try to write it off by noting that voters are more worried about economic concerns than these issues. Perhaps they are more concerned about the economy, but they should care about Obama’s laundry list of connections he has “disowned.”

    After all, he did disown both the black community and his own grandmother because he argued he could not disown Reverend Wright without disowning them. In his epic speech on race he said, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me.” All of this before, that’s right, disowning Reverend Wright and leaving his church. A politician that was willing to throw his grandmother under the bus should tell the American people one thing: he’s going to need a rather large bus when he throws us under it.