Mother Jones - Comments for "Mindgames"

Nyberg tries to ghost: "While I was aware Ayers participated in the Weather Underground, I didn't consider it a big deal b/c nobody else participating considered it a big deal."

FATAL. Thank G-d Obama isn't as stupid or morally obtuse as Nyberg.

First, the fact problem: Ayers wasn't "prosecuted". Federal charges against him and his co-conspirators were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.

Second, the subject: He was guilty.

Ayers' girlfriend at the time was killed when a Greenwich Village townhouse blew up, where his friends were assembling a nail bomb. Think about that.

A nail bomb is intended to kill PEOPLE. Ayers' tried to claim in his memoirs that his gf, Diane Oughton, had been trying to stop the bomb's construction, which is at best a mite self-serving.

Likewise with his own characterization of having the charges dropped: "Guilty as sin, free as a bird".

Third, the spin: Nyberg's take is EXACTLY the way Republicans would want Obama to react -- easily and accurately paraphrased as: 'so what if this guy bombed the US FRIGGING CAPITOL, if his friends were building a NAIL BOMB when he took it on the lam: no big deal....'

Whaddayanuts?

I think it's not so much that McCain can't make the accusations to Obama's face as that he doesn't want to make them in person in front of a "mixed" audience. The debate will be viewed by people who are moderately conservative and by independents. These people will just think he's nutty if he goes on about Ayers in that forum. His base will vote for him even if he refrains from this attack, but the attack would turn off independents and might even change the minds of moderate Republicans.

"Bill Ayers was prosecuted for his crimes. Since then he has applied his talents to education. I worked with him in his capacity as an educator and an organizer. I am proud of the work we did on the Annenburg Challenge. While I was aware Ayers participated in the Weather Underground, I didn't consider it a big deal b/c nobody else participating considered it a big deal. I wasn't going to miss out on doing something productive to help young people to insulate myself from some future political attack. Politics is about making a difference in people's lives. I made a choice that I was going to be involved and help young people better their lives through education. It would have be cowardly to not get involved because I was trying to protect myself from future political attacks by avoiding an individual, who had, after all, be prosecuted for his crimes."

I think Obama could give a response that good, or better.

I don't think McCain could do as well. (but that doesn't mean Obama shouldn't prepare for his best shot)

anonymous commenter imagines "a Republican opponent who was good at it" saying:

"So I can't blame you, as a Democrat, for accepting so easily that someone who firebombed a judge in his home -- where his family, Senator, including a 9 year old boy were sleeping -- had 'obviously' rehabilitated himself. That's how your party was raised, so to speak."

To which I imagine Obama might reply:

Well, Senator, I accepted that Bill Ayers was rehabilitated because he was serving on the board of an organization headed by Leonore Annenberg, a close friend of Ronald Reagan, who served in the State Department in President Reagan's administration, and who in fact is one of your most distinguished supporters in this campaign. I assumed that she wouldn't have Mr. Ayers on the board of her organization if he had not been rehabilitated.

And as you no doubt know, the Federal prosecutor who prosecuted Mr. Ayers for his activities said in a letter to The New York Times this week that he himself is "very pleased to learn" that Mr. Ayers "has become a responsible citizen."

As you know, I have repeatedly denounced the acts you described -- which Mr. Ayers committed when I was eight years old -- as reprehensible.

But let me ask you this, Senator McCain: Do you believe I am lying?

Do you believe that I am a terrorist sympathizer?

Do you want to tell the American people to their faces, right now, right here on this debate, that you agree with what your supporters are shouting out at your rallies, that I am a terrorist who should be killed?

And in that moment John McCain will stand naked before the American people, revealed as a sleazy, cowardly liar.

Ayers ads have been up in PA since August. Didn't seem to help McCain's numbers there, even before the economic collapse.

The best response wouldn't be another smear attack. If I was Obama I would first mention that he was 8 years old when these things happened, he only knew Ayers through an education board funded by Republicans and staffed with Republicans.

But mainly he should tell the story of South Carolina in 2000, what Rove did to McCain, and how sad it is that McCain is now employing those same shameful and dishonorable tactics.

"I'm inside yer OODA Loop, eatin' yer cycles."