The Man Behind The Mask

A number of reporters are starting to question the real story of Sen. Obama's background and meteoric rise to run for the Presidency. Aside from the recent book Obama Nation by Jerome Corsi (which I read last week), Michael Barone of US News published two articles that begin to shed some additional light on Obama's questionable history.

There is a difference between the two parties, however. The Democrats can usually depend on the mainstream media to accept their narratives uncritically, while the Republicans can expect them to punch holes in their story lines. In 1988, the media didn't note that Dukakis was less an earthy ethnic than a reformer in the Massachusetts Puritan tradition, but they were eager to point to the senior Bush's aristocratic eastern background.

The narrative of this year's Democratic National Convention can be forecast with some assurance. It will emphasize Barack Obama's roots in Kansas more than Kenya or even Hawaii; it will portray him as a leader from a new generation eager to cast off the partisanship of the past decade; it will hail him as a symbol that America has risen above past prejudices and can once again stand proud in the world. His acceptance speech in Invesco Field will invite comparison with the other two Democratic nominees who spoke in stadiums, Franklin Roosevelt in Philadelphia's Franklin Field in 1936 and John Kennedy in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960.

Pretty thin. An interesting question is whether mainstream media have any appetite for undermining this undeniably attractive narrative. Of "the whole Obama narrative," one reporter told the New Republic's Gabriel Sherman, "like all stories, it's not entirely true." Obama's record of reaching across party lines is, as his own answer to Rick Warren's recent Saddleback Civil Forum question showed, pretty thin. His paper trail is surprisingly thin, too: He has left no papers from his Illinois Senate days; he hasn't listed his law firm clients or provided more than one page of medical records; the papers of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which he chaired and in which the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers was heavily involved, were suddenly closed to National Review's Stanley Kurtz by the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois. Mainstream media, with the conspicuous exception of ABC News's George Stephanopoulos, have shown little curiosity about Obama's connection with Ayers. It will also be interesting to see if there is much coverage of Obama's 2003 vote in Illinois against protecting infants born alive in attempted abortions, now that his campaign has conceded that the bill was virtually identical to one that passed the U.S. Senate 98 to 0 in 2001.

Michael Barone also picks up the thread of the William Ayers connection with Sen. Obama…….

In my U.S. News column this week, I make a brief reference to the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber William Ayers and his connections to Barack Obama. They were closer than Obama implied when George Stephanopoulos asked him about Ayers in the April 16 debate—the last debate Obama allowed during the primary season. To get an idea of how close they were, check out Tom Maguire's Just One Minute blog, and Steve Diamond's Global Labor and Politics. The Obama-Ayers relationship is also mentioned in David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate ..............

Which leads us back to Barack Obama, who is now a U.S. senator and will shortly become the Democratic nominee for an office that even Chicago regards as more important than mayor. And the question presents itself: How did this outsider from Hawaii and Columbia and Harvard become somebody somebody sent? His wife, Michelle Robinson Obama, had some connections: Her father was (I believe) a Democratic precinct committeeman, she baby-sat for Jesse Jackson's children, and she worked as a staffer for the current Mayor Daley. Obama made connections on the all-black South Side by joining the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. But was Obama's critical connection to le tout Chicago William Ayers? That's the conclusion you are led to by Steve Diamond's blog. And by the fact that the National Review's Stanley Kurtz was suddenly denied access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge by the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle. (Kurtz had already been given an index to the records.) Presumably the CAC records would show a closer collaboration between Ayers and Obama than was suggested by Obama's response to Stephanopoulos that Ayers was just a guy "in the neighborhood.” For Obama, the outsider who gained the trust of the insiders, the position is different. He was willing to use Ayers and ally with him despite his terrorist past and lack of repentance. An unrepentant terrorist, who bragged of bombing the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, was a fit associate. Ayers evidently helped Obama gain insider status in Chicago civic life and politics—how much, we can't be sure unless the Richard J. Daley Library opens the CAC archive. But most American politicians would not have chosen to associate with a man with Ayers's past or of Ayers's beliefs. It's something voters might reasonably want to take into account.

Clarice Feldman from Pajamas Media.com had an interesting report on Sen. Obama's relationship to William Ayers:

The last thing Obama should want made public are his dubious associates. The public has had some exposure to his long time spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, many have heard of the convicted Chicago fixer Tony Rezko, and some have just a bit of knowledge about William Ayers. As McCain said ……: "[I]f Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let's start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama's political career was reportedly launched . Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group responsible for countless bombings against targets including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and numerous police stations, courthouses and banks. In recent years Mr. Ayers has stated, 'I don't regret setting bombs. … I feel we didn't do enough.'"

So, the story was that Ayers was an old professor in Mr. Obama's neighborhood who just happened to host a fundraiser for him in 1995 which launched his political career.

Some mush was thrown in along the way about having served with him on a charity board, but Obama did not correctly describe the charity or the dates or the extent of their association on it.

The truth is that the two men worked closely together for years, beginning several months before that 1995 fundraiser. The fund Obama chaired and which was supposed to improve public education in Chicago never met its stated purpose of improving public school pupils' performance and, in fact, probably hindered it, despite having blown through $110 million in the process. And as chairman of this group Obama funneled this money to politically useful types including Fidelistas and Maoists who like Ayers (now vice-president elect of the American Education Research Association) are working to make our public schools indoctrination centers for the left .

Once the public learns more of the CAC, will the voters decide that the manner in which Obama exercised his sole opportunity at executive authority was so good that he deserves the keys to the Oval Office?

All legitimate and required questions for one who is seeking to lead this nation…….