Are McCain’s associations with Senate bigots fair game?
During the Democratic primary, I wrote a column for CNN.com about how easy it is for any candidate to tar and feather another about their associations with less-than-acceptable figures. Sen. Hillary Clinton tried to blast Sen. Barack Obama for unsolicited comments made by Nation of Islam leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan, and folks like Fox News’ Sean “Little Ball of Hate” Hannity were happy to run with it, saying it was evidence that the junior senator from Illinois was unfit for president. But weaklings like Hannity never bothered to raise the issue of former Republican VP candidate Jack Kemp praising Farrakhan for his focus on self-help. Not only that, nearly everyone in the media was afraid to bring up the fact that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell had high praise for Farrakhan when he was mayor of Philadelphia, even as the Muslim leader sat just 20 feet away! Again, blasting one person’s associations can come back to bite you. We now see Gov. Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign trying to stir the pot by invoking William Ayers, a 1960s radical who was a major figure in the Weather Underground, a group that bombed the Pentagon and committed other unspeakable acts of terrorism against their own country. Palin has been hammering home the point on the campaign trail that Obama and Ayers were friends, “palling around” the Windy City, even though Ayers committed these crimes when Obama was just eight years old. And never mind the fact Ayers and Obama were involved in a multimillion dollar education grant that was funded by right wing Republican, media magnate Walter Annenberg. Do you here any of them castigating this late Republican pillar? The McCain camp, along with their right wing media comrades, want to convince you that Obama should not have decided to serve with Ayers, who was named the Citizen of the Year in Chicago in 1987 for his education work, and who was a professor at the University of Chicago. Now, if someone was seen as an acceptable figure by business, political and education figures, many whom support Democrats and Republicans, should Obama be faulted for sitting on a board with the guy? So, let’s use that same logic and apply it to McCain. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat from Chicago who serves as one of the national co-chairs for Obama, told me today on The Tom Joyner Morning Show that if we are to use the association tag as evidence of a candidate being unfit for president, what about McCain serving and working alongside virulent bigots like Sens. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd? Do we have evidence that these individuals committed specific acts against African Americans during Jim Crow? No. But we do know that their hateful words, and willingness to uphold laws that were absolutely anti-American, did not represent the best of this nation. Bombing the Pentagon is horrible and indefensible. But declaring yourself a patriot while you speak such hateful and venemous words against your own countrymen, who just happen to be black, and then try to oppress them, is just as hateful and venemous. So, did McCain work with them? Did he not speak with them? Should McCain have declared that he would not work alongside these men because of their past? Should the self-described maverick who believes in integrity and character have taken the honorable stance of resigning from the Senate to protest these hateful characters serving in the U.S. Senate? No. And this is why this association argument is so weak and impotent. For goodness sakes, Byrd was once a member of Ku Klux Klan, a domestic terrorist organization! Now, if Ayers was involved in these despicable acts today – or Byrd and his late Senate colleagues – then it is fair game. But no candidate should have to be held responsible for the actions of someone else, that took place years ago. I fundamentally believe that this is nothing but a smokescreen and effort to ignore the real issues we face. Nobody should care about any of this when they are losing their jobs, getting their homes foreclosed on, not able to afford to send their kids to college and unable to get access to healthcare. What I find to be more deplorable is to listen to McCain advisers say they don’t want this election to be about the issues, and want to turn the page to anything but the issue number one – the economy. If that kind of talk is coming from the camp of a guy who wants to be president, then that is something to be afraid of, not a candidate’s association with Ayers, or Thurmond, Helms or Byrd.
