Matthew Yglesias: Obama, Ayers, and Guilt By Association

[babylonsister]

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200810u/obama-ayers

Matthew Yglesias
Obama, Ayers, and Guilt By Association


With John McCain's poll numbers tanking as fast as the Dow, it's no surprise that his campaign has decided to dust off some of the inflammatory character attacks that Hillary Clinton's campaign debuted back during the primaries. The latest is this: designated attack dog Sarah Palin's reworked stump speech now accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

One might note at the outset that Obama has had dealings with just one domestic terrorist—former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers—and that "palling around" is hardly a good description of this passing acquaintanceship. Obama and Ayers were both politically active members of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, and both were affiliated with the neighborhood's University of Chicago. But the very New York Times article that Palin cited as a source concluded that "the two men do not appear to have been close."

So Palin’s "palling around" accusation is no more true than her boast that she "told congress ‘Thanks, but no thanks’" on the Bridge to Nowhere, or that she had the Alaska Permanent Fund divest from Sudan. But it seems to me that pointing out factual errors gives this line of argument too much credit: guilt by association, even when the association happens to be real, is a silly charge.

In 1995 Obama and Ayers really were both involved with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge—part of a national school reform effort financed by the publisher Walter Annenberg—along with various others, including the state's Republican governor. As it happens, Ayers’s and Obama’s relationship in this endeavor was no more than incidental. But suppose it had been more than that? Suppose Obama, a state legislator interested in urban problems, and Ayers, an education professor, had collaborated intensively on some local education project. What difference would it make?

snip//

The truth is that the Vietnam era was a time of political extremism in the United States. And part of the way that era was brought to a close was by turning away from efforts to banish the extremists from public life. Segregationist politicians went on chairing their congressional committees. Black Panthers ran for congress and won. Liddy got a radio show and Ayers became a professor.

In retrospect, it might have been better to undertake something like a truth and reconciliation commission to establish standards for rehabilitation and public expressions of contrition. But we didn't go down that path, and it's far too late now. And now we have these annoyingly nostalgic attacks. Some day, enough of the people who find rehashes of the sixties and seventies compelling will be dead that these tactics will cease to be effective. Until then, those of us who find the whole business annoying can only gripe.