When Barack Obama decided to run for the Illinois state senate, William Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, hosted a gathering in their home to introduce Obama to their friends. The two men became friendly while working together on an education project and serving on the Woods Foundation board in Chicago. It evidently did not trouble Obama that Ayers and Dohrn were founding leaders of the Weathermen, a radical group that bombed numerous buildings, including the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, or that Dohrn spent several years on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list.
At the “war council” meeting Ayers and Dohrn convened in 1969 to plan attacks on the United States, Dohrn spoke appreciatively of the Manson family’s recent murders of Sharon Tate and her friends. “Dig it,” Dohrn shouted. “First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them.” Referring to the killers stabbing Tate’s abdomen that held the son she was only days from delivering, Dohrn said, “They even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!”
Those are not the words of a misguided flower child; those are the words of a monster. Decent people shun Ayers and Dohrn; Obama befriended and defends them.
When questioned about his association with the couple, Obama says he cannot fairly be tied to events that occurred when he was a child. (Of course, Obama wasn’t alive when John F. Kennedy became president, and he’s certainly eager to assume that mantle.) But the crimes committed by Ayers and Dohrn cannot be relegated to history because the couple are utterly unrepentant, insisting their only regret is that they “weren’t able to do more.” As long as they stand by their despicable past, it continues to define them.
But suppose we accepted that Ayers and Dohrn are A-OK because they no longer commit terrorist acts. What, then, is the excuse for Obama’s alliance with real estate developer Tony Rezko, who only recently was convicted of fraud, bribery and money laundering?
Obama certainly had no doubts about the character of Hugh Hefner’s daughter, Christie, when he successfully sought her support. As manager of Playboy Enterprises, she degrades women and corrodes the culture in which his little girls must live. Yet Obama had no compunction about affiliating with Hefner and exploiting her connections.
There are only two explanations for why Obama consistently aligns himself with bad actors: Either he cannot discern character deficiencies, or he sees them and doesn’t care. When Rod Blagojevich ran for governor of Illinois, Obama signed on as an adviser; Obama strategist David Axelrod — who had worked with Blagojevich previously — declined. Validating the latter’s judgment, as governor, Blagojevich has been mired in nonstop scandal, barely escaping impeachment.
Before making that mistake, Obama led a voter registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley Braun to the U.S. Senate, where she quickly became a caricature of political corruption: cited for unaccounted campaign funds, castigated for meeting with a notorious Nigerian dictator and forced to return money after an apparent attempt to defraud Medicaid.
One would hope that Obama learned from his mistakes and now is more selective in his associations. But consider the leading candidates to become attorney general in an Obama administration: Eric Holder, who as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration helped engineer the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich, and Jamie Gorelick, who earned $26 million as vice chairman of Fannie Mae before its fraudulent accounting scheme was uncovered.
Giving Obama the most expansive benefit of the doubt, we could assume that all those alliances were based on political expedience and not personal admiration. Yet one of his closest and most long-standing relationships had nothing to do with politics: Obama’s friendship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom he described as “like family” to him. For 20 years — until Wright became a political liability this spring — Obama sat in Wright’s church and listened to that hate-mongering loon preach “God damn America” and tell congregants that the government invented HIV to destroy the black community. Pray tell, what excuses that?
Our friends are a reflection of who we are: what we admire, what we cherish, what we love. It says nothing good about Obama that he counts among his friends former terrorists, criminals and knaves. Given the number of questionable characters Obama surrounds himself with, it is only fair to question his own.
Melanie Scarborough is an award-winning commentary writer whose work has appeared in more than two dozen newspapers, magazines and books.
