Guilt By Association

The McCain camp has launched a long (1:40) ad entitled "Ayers" to challenge Barack Obama's truthfulness about his association with Bill Ayers.



The problem with the attack is that it suggests that Obama endorsed Ayers activities from the 1960's and 70's; the faulty conclusion challenges Obama to somehow prove something that does not exist. The McCain camp might want to consider investigating the other members of the Woods Fund board, which included "radicals" like the "...publisher of the Chicago Tribune, the President of the Field Museum and the President of the University of Illinois." An understanding of the real connection should put an end to this propaganda.

In fact, according to several people involved, Mr. Ayers played no role in Mr. Obama’s appointment. Instead, it was suggested by Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, a Chicago-based group whose board Mr. Obama, a young lawyer, had joined the previous year. At a lunch with two other foundation heads, Patricia A. Graham of the Spencer Foundation and Adele Simmons of the MacArthur Foundation, Ms. Leff suggested that Mr. Obama would make a good board chairman, she said in an interview. Mr. Ayers was not present and had not suggested Mr. Obama, she said.

The fear card is an old Republican playbook strategy.