Bill Ayers Presidential Election Controversy - Reactions To The Controversy

Reactions To The Controversy

Obama condemned Ayers' past through a spokesman. After the controversy arose, Ayers was defended by officials and others in Chicago. Mayor Richard M. Daley issued a statement in support of Bill Ayers the next day (April 17, 2008), as did the Chicago Tribune in an editorial. Ayers remained on the Board of Directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago. Woods Fund Chair Washington said it was "ridiculous to suggest there's anything inappropriate" about the two men serving on the foundation board.

In late May 2008, Michael Kinsley, a longtime critic of Ayers, argued in Time that Obama's relationship with Ayers should not be a campaign issue:

If Obama's relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others—including Republicans and conservatives—who have embraced Ayers and Dohrn as good company, good citizens, even experts on children's issues ... Ayers and Dohrn are despicable, and yet making an issue of Obama's relationship with them is absurd.

The Obama-Ayers connection was mentioned in Jerome Corsi's The Obama Nation, a book published in August, intended to undermine Obama's election campaign, and in conservative author David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama, where he wrote that the situation raised questions about Obama's judgment and influences. In May and August, Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial board member Steve Chapman suggested that while Obama was "justly criticized for his ties" to Ayers, the coverage of that connection should be matched by equal coverage of John McCain's associating with convicted Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy. As of late October, Chapman had still not received any information from the McCain campaign, despite McCain's promise to provide full disclosure.

On September 9, journalist Jake Tapper reported on a comic strip published on Ayers' blog, that explained the soundbite: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being ... 'When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough shit." ' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.' "

Stanley Kurtz, a conservative commentator and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, examined the University of Illinois at Chicago records for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) for the period in the 1990s when both Obama and Ayers were employed there, and reported his findings and opinions in the Wall Street Journal in late September 2008. The oped piece pointed out that Ayers attended only six board meetings, and that Ayers' group had no operational role with the CAC after the first year. "The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association," Kurtz wrote. "Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle."

William C. Ibershof, the lead federal prosecutor of the Weather Underground case, wrote to The New York Times on October 9, 2008:

I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child. Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.