Obama's Flimsy Ties to Bill Ayers

By Ari Berman, The Nation
Posted on October 7, 2008, Printed on October 7, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/101900/

In a last-ditch attempt to reverse its sagging poll numbers, the McCain campaign is attacking Barack Obama for his flimsy ties in Chicago to former '60s radical Bill Ayers. That's not surprising. The same thing happened during the Democratic primary, when Hillary Clinton made similar claims against Obama. In this piece from the May 19 edition of The Nation, Ari Berman explored Obama's relationship with Ayers and their respective ties to the Chicago-based Woods Fund.

From 1993 to 2002 Barack Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund, a small foundation in Chicago devoted to supporting a main passion of Obama's: community organizing. Unless you worked in the philanthropic world or regularly watched Fox News, you'd probably never heard of the Woods Fund before ABC's April 16 Democratic debate. As part of a barrage of guilt-by-association questioning, co-moderator George Stephanopoulos asked Obama about his connection to another Woods Fund board member, Bill Ayers, a former '60s radical and ringleader of the Weather Underground. In an interview with theNew York Times, coincidentally published on 9/11, Ayers, reflecting on his memoir,Fugitive Days, had said inartfully, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Ayers, who meant that he wished the antiwar movement had ended the Vietnam War sooner, clarified in a letter to theTimes, "My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism." Taken out of context, the statement sparked outrage, leading Stephanopoulos to ask Obama, "Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?"