Character matters
Roger L. Simon, one of my favorite bloggers, takes a look at Obama's continued evasions regarding his relationship with former-but-proud terrorist William Ayers, and what he sees he finds very disturbing:
There’s nothing wrong with being a socialist. (Regarding Obama's apparent membership in the New Party. --Phineas) I called myself one for the better part of twenty years. Millions of people have and many still do. But there is something very wrong with hiding who you are or who you were from the electorate—especially if you want to be President of the United States. Yet that seems to be a habit of Mr. Obama’s, with the collusion of the press. To my knowledge, no one in the mainstream media has begun to inquire into the details of Obama’s curiously unreported years at Columbia and Harvard, although much could be relatively easily ascertained. Obama himself has not been remotely forthcoming about them.
The inescapable conclusion is that Barack Obama is a highly deceptive, often dishonest individual. Again, many would say this is standard operating procedure for politicians in our culture (and most others too). But Obama presents himself as something different, a new kind of post-modern politician above the conventional dirty dealings of backroom politics.
(Emphasis added.)
Take a few minutes to read the whole thing. Roger is not a conservative, but a former doctrinaire Leftist who has become much more eclectic and pragmatic later in life. And be sure to follow two links at the end of his article, linked here for convenience: Ron Radosh's article on the relationship between Ayers' educational theories and Obama, and Jack Cashill's on his suspicion that Ayers may have authored significant portions of Obama's most famous book, Dreams from my father.
Elections are about policy and character. Keep that in mind on election day.
RELATED: Charles Krauthammer is devastating on the issue of Obama's character:
Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers's unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?
No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.
First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?
Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.
Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.
Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share the Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers's views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.
(Emphasis mine. h/t Blue Crab Boulevard)
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