When reports of Sen. Obama’s connection to Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn first surfaced, he tried to dismiss Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” and Ayers’ misdeeds as ancient history. Skeptics pointed out that Ayers’ radical views aren’t past tense, but very much present tense, and saw Sen. Obama’s association with him, along with his close relationship with people like the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as evidence of his comfort with radical leftist views, and of a general “no enemies to the left” policy.And that was about as much as people thought about it, until recently. I’m not sure who first raised the question of why Sen. Obama, with a pretty thin résumé that’s particularly lacking in executive experience, was no longer taking credit for his time as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), a foundation which Ayers helped found. Given that the foundation had a considerable amount of money (I’ve seen the figure $50 million bandied about, but I don’t have any hard data), this would seem to be experience well worth talking about. Given that, why was Sen. Obama keeping it so quiet?Stanley Kurtz decided to try to find out—and that’s when the fun began. When he asked to see the CAC’s internal files, held by the Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago, he was initially told he would be allowed to do so, and then the library began stonewalling him, offering a shifting collection of reasons to justify their actions.When Kurtz subsequently went on WGN-AM in Chicago to talk about his efforts with radio host Milt Rosenburg (audio here), the Obama campaign exploded. Rosenburg’s producer, Zack Christenson, invited the campaign to send someone to appear on the show with Kurtz, but they refused; instead, they tried to defeat the story by brute force. The campaign sent out an e-mail urging supporters to complain to WGN, calling Kurtz a “smear-merchant” and a “slimy character assassin” “pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations” via “divisive, destructive ranting.” Quite a lot of opprobrium for a guy who was just trying to get at some documents—he hadn’t even said anything yet. The e-mail also implicitly accused WGN of preventing the Obama campaign from responding to Kurtz, when in fact it was their choice not to send someone on the show.Now, this suggests one of two things. One, it’s possible that the Obama campaign’s reaction was justified by something truly explosive in those files. Honestly, though, that seems unlikely to me; I suppose nothing is impossible, especially in Chicago politics, but short of the CAC funding Sen. Obama’s 2004 run for Senate, it’s hard to see where there’s room for a true scandal in there. The most that would seem likely would be evidence that Sen. Obama and Bill Ayers were in fact close friends and associates.If that’s the case, then the Obama campaign appears to be overreacting in truly startling fashion. For one thing, it already seems pretty clear that Bill Ayers wasn’t just “a guy who lives in [Sen. Obama’s] neighborhood”; as Kurtz notes in the article linked above, the information that is publicly available leaves little doubt that they worked together pretty closely, and on a friendly basis. But if all there is in the CAC records is confirmation that they worked together and that Sen. Obama was comfortable with Ayers’ efforts and positions—well, honestly, conservatives already suspect that, liberals don’t care, and I don’t see that being an issue that sways a lot of folks in the middle. They probably half-suspect it as well, but it was a few years ago, and there are really more important things to worry about. If that’s all it is, the Obama campaign shouldn’t have tried to fight Kurtz; they should have just let him have his access, dig up what he’s going to dig up, and report it, then weathered the dust-up and gone on, confident that by November it will all be old news. Fighting as they did, if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, only hurts their candidate by drawing attention to the story and making it look as if he has something to hide—or, worse, something to be afraid of. That suggests that Sen. Obama’s biggest challenge isn’t Bill Ayers: it’s his own campaign.Update: of course, that assumes that Ayers doesn’t keep stirring the pot with stuff like this . . .
