Elizabeth Wurzel: Obama's Other Radical Friends
[Miss Wurtzel, a recent graduate of Yale Law School, is the author of "Prozac Nation" (Houghton Mifflin, 1994).]
... Apparently, back when he was running for state senate, Barack Obama had fund-raising events at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and there's been some press about the senator's friendship with this controversial Weathercouple. Many reporters are well aware, even though Mr. Obama has described his connection to Ayers and Dohrn as "flimsy," that the senator's relationship with his radical Hyde Park neighbors is actually quite warm, even close.
In her tepid, wobbling way, Hillary Clinton has attempted to use this well-known fact to portray her opponent as a secret subversive. But mostly, the press doesn't want to touch this story – and no one else does either, as if it actually were TNT. Perhaps right-wing evildoers are holding onto this story to exploit in the general election.
There are a few other possibilities. One seems unlikely: That America has forgiven the '60s. It seems we will never quite get over the assorted shocks to the system and cumulative mayhem of an entire generation having a collective tantrum. It's the one decade that keeps coming up in every presidential election. Always, we have to know what the candidates were up to back then – the drafts, the deferments, the dodges, the drugs. Since Mr. Obama is too young to have a '60s story to tell, the Weatherman connection becomes his syndrome by proxy.
We can accept the '60s as necessary, but can't quite forgive the disarray. More likely, we never want another mess of that magnitude visited upon us again. And we all feel the pull right now. Between the war, the economy and some horrible x-element that can only be ruled a Carteresque malaise, we are all afraid of yet another turbulent time.
This next presidential election, we all know, is serious business. Time to pick a leader who will ensure that the kids are all right – and the grown-ups too. It's the reckoning, if not the rapture. And none of us wants to get bogged down with the same kind of stupid scandals that have dogged all our recent elections.
The brief attempt to link John McCain to a looker of a lobbyist lasted through a couple of news cycles, and went with the wind. The Clintons finally released their tax returns, we discovered they are multimillionaires, and life went on. We forgive the former first lady her sniper-fire memory lapse. All of us have been swiftboated to death, and this time around we are determined to elect a president without distraction and obfuscation: 527s be damned.
In a way, the public is saying that we don't want the country erupting into a divisiveness akin to what created the '60s scene, the atmosphere of the Weather Underground. Even Jeremiah Wright, an embarrassing pastor who would probably have brought down a less-deft political prestidigitator, will not do in Barack Obama. The Reverend rants and raves. It's a mess. But Mr. Obama's campaign will carry on.
As for Mr. Obama's friends, the Weathercouple: By all accounts, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers are unfathomably charming, brilliant and comely people, absolutely irresistible. Everybody who meets them is taken and forgets what they should know.
Mr. Obama expects us all to understand this, because we understand everything else. He is doing something most unusual: He's acting as if the American people are thinking with their brains. He's giving all of us a lot of credit. Could it be that we deserve it?
Read entire article at WSJ
... Apparently, back when he was running for state senate, Barack Obama had fund-raising events at the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and there's been some press about the senator's friendship with this controversial Weathercouple. Many reporters are well aware, even though Mr. Obama has described his connection to Ayers and Dohrn as "flimsy," that the senator's relationship with his radical Hyde Park neighbors is actually quite warm, even close.
In her tepid, wobbling way, Hillary Clinton has attempted to use this well-known fact to portray her opponent as a secret subversive. But mostly, the press doesn't want to touch this story – and no one else does either, as if it actually were TNT. Perhaps right-wing evildoers are holding onto this story to exploit in the general election.
There are a few other possibilities. One seems unlikely: That America has forgiven the '60s. It seems we will never quite get over the assorted shocks to the system and cumulative mayhem of an entire generation having a collective tantrum. It's the one decade that keeps coming up in every presidential election. Always, we have to know what the candidates were up to back then – the drafts, the deferments, the dodges, the drugs. Since Mr. Obama is too young to have a '60s story to tell, the Weatherman connection becomes his syndrome by proxy.
We can accept the '60s as necessary, but can't quite forgive the disarray. More likely, we never want another mess of that magnitude visited upon us again. And we all feel the pull right now. Between the war, the economy and some horrible x-element that can only be ruled a Carteresque malaise, we are all afraid of yet another turbulent time.
This next presidential election, we all know, is serious business. Time to pick a leader who will ensure that the kids are all right – and the grown-ups too. It's the reckoning, if not the rapture. And none of us wants to get bogged down with the same kind of stupid scandals that have dogged all our recent elections.
The brief attempt to link John McCain to a looker of a lobbyist lasted through a couple of news cycles, and went with the wind. The Clintons finally released their tax returns, we discovered they are multimillionaires, and life went on. We forgive the former first lady her sniper-fire memory lapse. All of us have been swiftboated to death, and this time around we are determined to elect a president without distraction and obfuscation: 527s be damned.
In a way, the public is saying that we don't want the country erupting into a divisiveness akin to what created the '60s scene, the atmosphere of the Weather Underground. Even Jeremiah Wright, an embarrassing pastor who would probably have brought down a less-deft political prestidigitator, will not do in Barack Obama. The Reverend rants and raves. It's a mess. But Mr. Obama's campaign will carry on.
As for Mr. Obama's friends, the Weathercouple: By all accounts, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers are unfathomably charming, brilliant and comely people, absolutely irresistible. Everybody who meets them is taken and forgets what they should know.
Mr. Obama expects us all to understand this, because we understand everything else. He is doing something most unusual: He's acting as if the American people are thinking with their brains. He's giving all of us a lot of credit. Could it be that we deserve it?