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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Oeconomicus who wrote (67451)	10/12/2008 2:09:13 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

And if Obama had met Ayers in 1969 that would be relevant. But he didn't meet him for another 25 years. And in totally different circumstances. Reiterating: The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, was started by a $49 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation, which was established by the publisher Walter Annenberg, a prominent Republican whose widow, Leonore, is a contributor to the McCain campaign. It was supported by a Republican governor and included on its board prominent local civic leaders, including one former Nixon administration official who has given $1,500 to McCain's campaign this year. Education Week says the group's work "reflected mainstream thinking" among school reformers. It sounds normal, and if support was so overtly bipartisan it might be radical but surely in a good way. And if this CAC has trusted Ayers as one of the three original organisers, and they then selected Obama to oversee distribution, why on earth would he (or anyone else) have queried their right to do so? It's their money. And why would Obama even have queried Ayer's position or respectability? It's unlikely he even recognised the name, from - what - news reports from 25 years in the past, when he was maybe 9-10? It's just not a connection that would come to mind, surely. No doubt it was brought to his attention later, at some point: 25-year-old history isn't so very ancient it never gets raised. But it's pretty obvious Ayers was quite accepted in civilised society in 1995, whatever he'd done earlier; so (refer, yet again, to discussions on the acceptance of former terrorists) Obama isn't going to make enemies by standing on an extremely high-handed point of principle, especially as it would achieve nothing else... and it wasn't as though Ayers was a mentor, or a close friend, or anything like that. As someone who worked with Obama 13 years ago, who was plainly already accepted and established in senior society by people from both parties before Obama, it just isn't an issue. <edit> and here's an extra link which says it well... blogs.tnr.com True, Ayers apparently had a small party for Obama back in 1995; true, Ayers gave some small sum of money to one of Obama's campaigns; and true, Ayers and Obama simultaneously served, for a time, on a board of a local organization, the Woods Fund, which helps disadvantaged children. But there was nothing even vaguely like a close relationship between them; and it would be easy to identify countless people, since 1995, with whom Obama has had much closer associations.<.i> The only way I find it even remotely relevant today is that it's obviously the most damning thing McCain can find on Obama. Which in proving the absence of any further negative is probably a positive in itself, but I don't expect you to agree with this either. That's my case. You plainly disagree. Fine, you are entitled to. I won't agree that it's significant or some uniquely damning point, and I'm afraid I don't even find it interesting enough to go for a fourth or further round of repetition. Now, if he'd chosen Ayers as his VP, it would be significant. The selection of the VP is surely a major issue - it's a major indication of character, of judgment and of foresight: it shows the kind of person you trust, even want, to lead the country should the worst happen to you. In a very real way the VP should represent the President's wish for the future. So if you want a discussion on that point, I'm game.