Obama Says Didn’t Know of Ayers’ Terrorist Past
After having been attacked by Senator John McCain and Sarah Palin for his alleged professional relationship with Bill Ayers - former U.S. domestic terrorist, today a radical dedicated to reforming the U.S. education system, especially in the slums of Chicago - Barack Obama finally came with a response other than “he was just a guy living in my neighborhood” on Tuesday.
Obama’s top political adviser said today that the senator “did not know” that Ayers was a retired terrorist.
“When he went [ed.: to the party at Ayers' home that launched Obama's political career] he certainly didn’t know the history,” chief Obama strategist David Axelrod told CNN. “There’s no evidence that they’re close,” he added.
“There’s no evidence that Obama in any way subscribed to any of Ayers’ views. And Obama’s been very clear about condemning the despicable acts that Bill Ayers committed 40 years ago when Obama was 8 years old.”
Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, which was accused of attacking several government targets in the early 1970s.
Speaking at events in Florida, Republican candidate for vice president Sarah Palin reacted to Axelrod’s less than likely defense, saying, “Today they’re saying for the first time that Barack Obama didn’t know back then about Ayers’ radical background.”
“Wait a minute,” Palin said. “He didn’t know a few months ago that he had launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist?”
Conservative pundits also responded to the defense arguing that it was highly unlikely that Obama did not know about Ayers’ troubling past. Libertarian conservative blog QandO commented: ‘While this may not be the best way for the McCain camp to attack Barack Obama at this juncture (and, of course that remains to be seen), there certainly seems to be much more to the Ayers/Obama relationship than “oh, he’s some guy in the neighborhood” doesn’t there?’
Jim Geraghty, writing for the conservative National Review Online, added: “It’s rather revealing that NOW the Obama camp is coming out with the “oh, I had no idea he was a radical and built bombs” excuse, a mere half-year after Hillary brought up the association… Rather strange that the “this isn’t the Bill Ayers I thought I knew” excuse comes up long after the first defenses came out.”
Meanwhile, others have started digging into Ayers’ recent actions and expressed beliefs. Sol Stern opined in an article for City Journal that ‘[c]alling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer… For instance, at a November 2006 education forum in Caracas, Venezuela, with President Hugo Chávez at his side, Ayers proclaimed his support for “the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.”’
Ayers went on to say, Stein points out that “Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education—a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation,” and then, as in days of old, raised his fist and chanted: “Viva Presidente Chávez! Viva la Revolucion Bolivariana! Hasta la Victoria Siempre!”
‘Ayers and his education school comrades,’ Stein went on to write, ‘are explicit about the need to indoctrinate public school children with the belief that America is a racist, militarist country and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive. As a leader of this growing “reform” movement, Ayers was recently elected vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s largest organization of ed school professors and researchers.’
It seems that there could be more to the Ayers-Obama relationship than Obama has been willing to admit thus far. Not only were the men closer than Obama previously said, it seems that one could also question the education organizations the two worked for. It could very well be argued by Obama’s opponents, and they undoubtedly will, that these organizations were dedicated to influence students and to indoctrinate them with radically progressive views and beliefs.
Conservative commentators already started doing exactly that on Tuesday. Commentary Magazine’s Jennifer Rubin, for instance, wondered: ‘So even if Obama is never queried on whether he was the only adult in Chicago unaware of Ayers’s Weather Underground background, shouldn’t someone ask why he was working for and helping to fund an organization which supported this type of curriculum?’
Meanwhile, considering the available evidence, it is unlikely that Obama did not know much about Ayers, or that Ayers was merely ‘a guy living in the neighborhood’ and nothing more. Obama has neglected to answer significant and legitimate questions about this relationship which will undoubtedly result in more rather than less questions about it.
No I think its definitely true that Obama didn’t know about Ayers past. And that Obama was holding back from saying that outright, because he was afraid of conservatives questioning his judgment for not knowing his associates.
But no matter if you heard of the Weather Underground, I doubt you, Michael Galien, would put 2 and 2 together and realize who this guy was.
Of course, I think conservatives are bringing this up not to say Obama likes terrorists, but to try to show Obama isn’t a moderate. That he’s comfortable in the same crowd as radicals, even if he isn’t one.
I don’t think its helpful to focus on Ayers though, I think its distracting, and makes Republicans look like they’re being unfair. Republicans need to play down references to Ayers, and just refer to him–like McCain did–as a Chicago poltician.
Um. I’m an American Studies student. You think I don’t know who Ayers is?
Michael,
I didn’t remember who Ayers was, I knew about the Weather Underground but didn’t remember any of the names involved. But I’m not talking about you, as an American Studies student, but you if you were in the same position Obama was. I think its understandable that Obama couldn’t place him, and most Americans wouldn’t.
If I was in the same position Obama was in, I would have known. What’s more, the man’s adviser, Axelrod, admitted that it was somewhere "around" this time that Obama was informed about it yet he served on the boards with Ayers nonetheless.
Back to you.
I would not be involved in that type of left-wing politics, and given that, I would probably have heard dissent from conservative people about him as a college professor. But Chicago is a pretty liberal city, and I don’t know if Bill Ayers advertised to everyone that he set bombs in the 60s. When people get involved in that kind of environment they get sucked into a world with a lot of shady characters, and might not realize right away that a college professor was a terrorist. So, I’m just saying that what Axelrod said is believable.
Obama should have cut everything off when he learned about Ayers, and that’s another matter, you’re right
Once upon a time I met someone who would later become a friend. At the time of meeting him, he seemed well spoken, had made great strides in his community. He supported acts to reform domestic violence, assisted the elderly, worked in soup kitchens from time to time.
He was quite a wonderful being. Turns out however, when I was young, I was naive and trusting. I let the man into my home, and while he has done nothing out of the ordinary, I found he his past was murky. He had done things he wasn’t so proud of.
My friends and colleagues now condemn me, even though many differing books on religion point to a level of "understanding" and fairness. My life is now shattered because of his actions, when I wholeheartedly knew nothing of his past.
Irrespective of his current progress in life, reforming himself, he should forever be condemned for his actions 20 years ago. In fact he should face the death penalty. There is no reform, once a bad person, always a bad person period. We need the punishing laws of the US where if someone gets a parking ticket, it will forever remain on their record.
Job Interview: "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?"
Yes No
Off with their head. We don’t need a society who is forgiving of the past. We need a society that cries over the milk we spilled last week. What else is there to focus on in this economy. Politics?