A politically ambitious young man meets a well-connected (son of the former chair of the local electric company, with a wife who worked at a local white shoe law firm) local activist who lived in his neighborhood at a meeting about education.
Like any smart candidate, the pol wannabe follows up. Both men become heavily involved in an education project sponsored by a foundation headed by a former Reagan administration ambassador.
Later in the year, when the young man runs for office, the activist holds a small coffee for the young candidate at his home. The young candidate wins. Two years later, the City where both lived names the activist “Man of the Year.” Still later, the two men both serve on the Board of a local anti-poverty group and attend about a dozen meetings together over the years. During this time, the activist gives the pol a check for $200, which, given his resources, seems rather stingy. Even after the pol leaves the board, the two men find themselves appearing together in panel discussions at least twice, and say hello to each other when they run into each other.
In politics, one would not regard two such men as being asshole buddies. Most local State Senators, but not all, would personally return a call from such a guy the day they received it, unless it were a busy day. Most US Senators might put a junior aide on the matter, if they bothered at all.
Virtually everything one needs to know about the despicable nature of Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn appears in two Michael Kinsley articles (one linked and the other, “Dohrn Again”, appearing in Kinsley’s book “Curse of the Giant Muffins”).
At a time when the country’s youth was engaging in an nearly unprecedented outbreak of idealism and activism, Ayres and Dohrn did their best to channel such noble impulses into senseless violence. And by “senseless violence” I mean that it was unhinged even from a Malcolm X like rationale of “by any means necessary.” So unhinged, in fact, that it might meet the ancient definition of pornography as being something “utterly without redeeming social importance”. I myself wouldn’t use the word pornographic, despite the masturbatory element of the self indulgence involved; rather, I’d use the word obscene.
My favorite Ayres quote from the time concerns his expression of the need to “smash ideas…and combat liberalism in ourselves.”
With such rhetoric, perhaps Ayres would now be qualified to seek employment with the McCain campaign.
In his two articles, Kinsley documents not only the proud couple’s lack of regret (“They remain spectacularly unrepentant, self-indulgent, unreflective–still bloated with a sense of entitlement, still smug with certainty“), but also the Chicago’s establishment’s utter lack of concern with it (“Ayers the elder sat on every Establishment board in town–Northwestern, the Tribune Co., the Chicago Symphony. Ayers the younger and his wife were welcomed back into the fold…They set off bombs and talked about killing their parents, and the Chicago establishment didn't even care. The important thing is that he was Tom Ayers' boy.”)
In 1995, it was probably the rare campaign for State Senate that did web searches to check the bona fides of couples who wanted to sponsor a house party (even with the advent of Google, it might even be a rarity in 2008), but why the hell would Barack Obama (who was about eight years old and living in the tropics when the Dynamite Duo were in their heyday) even bother screening Billy Ayres, when Walter Annenberg and Richard Daley's(?!?) son had already done the job.
John McCain has said “whatever the question, whatever the issue, there's always a back story with Senator Obama,” and indeed, like John McCain’s friendship with Charles Keating, Barack Obama’s past life is not without some associations which require a more detailed explanation. However, it should be clear to anyone with a modicum of sense, that the “relationship” with Ayres and Dohrn is not one of them.
(NOTE: An earlier reference to Google, before it existed, has been modified)