Ayers and the McCain-G. Gordon Liddy Symbiosis

Does John McCain "pal around with terrorists?"

Certainly McCain's continuing "association" and relationship with the convicted Watergate burglar and domestic terrorist G. Gordon Liddy might suggest that is the case, if we are to apply the standards drawn by the McCain campaign.

In 1998, Liddy gave a fundraiser in his Scottsdale, Arizona home for McCain's senatorial re-election campaign -- the two posed for photographs together; and as recently as May, 2007, as a presidential candidate, McCain was a guest on Liddy's syndicated radio show. Inexplicably, McCain heaped praise on his host's values. During the segment, McCain said he was "proud" of Liddy, and praised Liddy's "adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." From the program:

LIDDY: Your experience in the Hanoi Hilton is remarkable. I mean, I put in five years in a prison [for masterminding the Watergate burglary, and associated crimes], but it was here in the United States, and they didn't torture - the only torture that I had was being forced to listen to rap music from time to time.

McCAIN: Well, you know, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of your family. I'm proud to know your son, Tom, who's a great and wonderful guy. And it's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon. And congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.

Which of Liddy's "principles and philosophies" was McCain referring to? Liddy's advocacy of break-ins? Firebombings? Assassinations? Kidnappings? Taking target practice with figures nicknamed Bill and Hillary?

During the same period that Bill Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, Gordon Liddy was making plans to firebomb a Washington think tank, assassinate a prominent journalist, undertake the Watergate burglary, break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, and kidnap anti-war protesters at the 1972 Republican convention.

Re: Liddy's "continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great:" Did McCain mean to include Liddy's instructions to listeners of his radio show in 1994 (around the time Ayres and Obama were on a board together discussing education programs and other plots) on how to shoot Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents (aim for the head)?

If ATF agents attempt to curtail a citizen's gun ownership, Liddy counseled, "Well, if the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests."

More recently, Liddy explained making the Clintons objects of shooting practice: "I did relate that on the 4th of July of last year, when I and my family and some friends were out firing away at a properly-constructed rifle range and we ran out of targets, and so we - I drew some stick figure targets and I thought we ought to give them names. So I named them Bill and Hillary, thought it might improve my aim. It didn't. My aim is good anyway. Now, having said that, I accept no responsibility for somebody shooting up the White House."

The Liddy-McCain symbiosis has been mentioned in a number of posts on the Internet - mostly by bloggers and sites identified with The Left. But the documentation of their interaction (Liddy has also contributed financially to McCain's presidential campaign) is not a matter of Left or Right: It is astonishing that, given the prominence of the Ayers matter accorded by virtually every "mainstream" news outlet in America, there has been virtually nothing on the subject in the major newspapers and broadcast networks. This is a real journalistic failure and abrogation of responsibility.

Is Liddy any less a domestic terrorist than Bill Ayers? It is a zero-sum argument, for sure. I do not believe, incidentally, that John McCain shares the most abhorrent of Liddy's values, as expressed in Liddy's actions during the same period that Ayers was a Weatherman - and which Liddy continues to express, unapologetically, to this day.

But McCain has now become so unmoored from the principles he once espoused, so shameless in his courtship not only of the Republican "base" but in his eagerness to unleash a poisonous arsenal of character assassination and guilt-by-association - and plain-and-simple incitement of people's fears and prejudices - that, now, inevitably his and Sara Palin's rallies and campaign events have taken on the aura of mobs at times.

"Kill him," a man in the crowd responded last week, when Palin declared -yet again - "He's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." In Virginia, the State Republican chairman announced a set of talking points to campaign volunteers - stressing the incendiary connection, reported Time magazine, between Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden: "Both have friends that bombed the Pentagon. That is scary," the Republican chairman said.

The most recent McCain ad on the subject shouts, "Obama worked with terrorist William Ayers when it was convenient" - perhaps suggesting, indeed, even that the candidate was there planting bombs.

The intended message of the McCain campaign is, of course, that Obama is less than patriotic - enunciated even by the candidate's wife, Cindy: "The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body," she recently told a crowd of several thousand, which also heard her husband and Palin sound similar notes. (The chairman of the Lehigh, Pa., County Republican Party, William Platt, "implored the crowd to work hard to elect McCain or wake up November 5 to see 'Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama,' as the president," reported The Washington Post.)

Like Cindy McCain, the campaign's "Ad Facts" also trumpet - misleadingly - the only troop-funding bill that Obama voted against, in 2007 - without noting that Obama first voted for the bill, in a version that included a timetable for withdrawal. Nor did Cindy McCain mention that her husband, too, voted against the troop-funding bill - in the version that contained withdrawal language.

Thus has John McCain embarked on a scorched-earth death struggle for the presidency - cultural warfare that knows no bounds, exceeding perhaps even the mendacity and ferocity of the campaign waged against him by George Bush in 2000, and of which McCain once said there was "a special place in hell" for the Bush operatives who smeared him. (McCain also said of the Swift-boat attacks against John Kerry by Republicans in 2004: "I deplore this kind of politics. I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable.")

The lethal weapon of the McCain campaign's dreams is the explosive allegation that, in Palin's words - Obama "pals around with terrorists." McCain, wisely, did not raise the matter himself in the last presidential debate. Why?

At the time, much of the commentariat attributed the omission to McCain's purported concerns that Obama would respond by reciting the history of McCain's "association" with the S&L swindler Charles Keating, for which McCain was cited by the Senate Ethics Committee early in his career, for exercising "poor judgment" for intervening improperly with federal regulators on behalf of Keating, as part of the infamous Keating Five scandal.

But the more likely explanation of why McCain avoided a debate confrontation about "palling around with terrorists" is McCain's very real - and recent - symbiotic association and praise for another (not Ayers) domestic terrorist emblematic of the Vietnam era: G. Gordon Liddy.

Comments

[Joy2]

Just in time fo Halloween, "G.Gordon the Plumber" reminds us of truly ghoulish deeds in dark days past. It speaks volumes that John McCain still "pals around" with him.

[Shenygirl1]

I commend the fact that Senator Obama has taken the high road and not mentioned McCain's
questionable associations. But, I do feel that the mainstream media (the so-called left leaning, liberal media) certainly should have spent time mentioning these facts. Why have they overlooked these
details? We have Liddy, a proud terrorist and convicted felon and Keating, a man who robbed his own bank, leaving investors that he conned into placing their life savings into junk bonds penniless, and costing taxpayers a billion plus in bailouts from the FDIC. Sounds like history is repeating itself again, only on a much larger scale. And McCain says he doesn't believe in regulations that could affect the banking industry and Wall Street. Thats his straight talk for you.

[dlinguist]

If there is an avoidance of criticism of the G Gordon Liddy-McCain connection it lies in the difficulty of using "in-kind" arguments to highlight someone else's hypocrisy. You end up toeing the line of propriety if follow the same strategy you're condemning. Inadvertently you also end up validating the other party's argument as rational. The high road Obama's campaign has maintained on this and other issues is one of the reasons why an amazing number of conservatives are endorsing Obama.

OFF TOPIC: I do strongly recommend the book "The Final Days" coauthored by Carl Bernstein, it gives a vigorous inside view of the Nixon White House in the death throes of the Watergate Scandal, and then do what I did, follow that up with "The Price of Loyalty", by former W. Bush Secretary of the Treasury who gives some amazing inside information on W.'s administration. Great back to back reads.

[veggiequeenmo]

say it with me now, "H Y P O C R I T E S"

[pb28]

The msm ignores Liddy becasue the right wing noise machine loves Liddy. They play for the same team

[snarkopolitan]

Coda: I did a little research on the Weather Underground: they were klutzes. The only Americans they k.illed were themselves---their village bo.mb factory blew up. They also tried twice to hold massive demonstrations, and were surprised when almost nobody showed.

All this when Obama was eight. In either Hawaii or Indonesia.

[peacegurl48]

Right yet the smear says Ayers "killed Americans"! Why is this not resoundingly debunked in the MSM? As misguided as they were the Weather Undergound was a militant radical group in a very different time. I was a very active war protester in the late 60s and 70s and this group had no support from those of us who practiced peaceful protest. If Obama is condemned for sitting on the board with Ayers why are the others (like Annenberg) not condemned as well?

As a State and US Senator hasn't Obama been vetted a thousand times more than Palin?


And why oh why do McCain and Palin get a pass for their much scarier, more reccent, validation of domestic terrorists (Liddy) and the lunatic fringe (AIP)?

[willsdad]

The problem is, Obama presents himself as a centrist. I agree that the McCain campaign shouldn't exaggerate the pathetic "terrorist"'s record but that misses the point. Obama is an extreme leftist. Since he is unwilling to come out of the closet, we have to peg him according to those he would choose to asociate himself with. He is a radical socialist! He should have the guts to run as himself. Stop hiding Obama!!! Then there would be no need to bring up Ayers. The BHO run for president would be finished.

[moongal6]

What is the matter with you?
This is NOT a rhetorical question.
Did you not read the article by a trusted journalist?

[snarkopolitan]

The difference between McCain's deliberate, repeated contacts with Liddy, all for self-promotion, and Obama's limited, formal contacts with Ayres by serving on a couple of educational panels with him should tell you as much about the difference in the two candidates as it does about the absurdity of McCain's claim.

I have a lovely double portrait of McCain and Liddy: http://snarkopolitan.blogspot.com
Liddy is such a vainglorious, psychotic goof that he practically draws himself.

[SurrealPumpkin]

You're tempting me. Are the two of them crawling out of pit of slime or into it? Or maybe in a daliesque way they are crawling out of one pit into another which turns out to be the same pit.

Yuck! I can see it, which means I'll have to paint it. I refuse to be very accurate about the figures though, I don't want to get to know them that well.

[SurrealPumpkin]

PS I love your work.

[UnknownSoldier]

This just shows the unfairness in the media, and how biased the media is against Democrats.

[mrsvaughn]

NO MCCAIN ASSOCATIONS IS NO DIFFERNT THAN BARACK SUPPOSED TO BE ASSOCATIONS WITH AYERS, THE DIFFERNT IS THAT BARACK THEY CALLED HIM BLACK EVEN HE IS BI-RACIAL., MCCAIN IS WHITE THAT'S WHY HE IS NOT BEING ATTACK FOR HIS ASSOCATIONS, THIS COUNTRY IS SO RACIST THEY DO NOT SEE THE TRUTH ALL THEY WANT TO DO IS ATTACK A BLACK HUMAN BEING THAT GOD HAS MADE

[BlueBoomer]

I wish the Obama campaign would take McCain's ad re the "Obama/Ayers connection" and photo-shop pix of McCain/Liddy into it, using the same voice-over (subbing the correct names if/where applicable)... Hearing that woman's voice used against the repubics would be a real treat, AND would make a most salient point.

Also an ad showing a 10-second exchange of Joe BIDEN with a middle-east political leader OR visiting the MRAP factory in NC, followed by the 10-second clip of Palin asking about Malechi's (sic) kid's name, and ending with a simple voice over :"Who's REALLY ready ?" is also in order.

Pointing out negative comparisons is fair and necessary and doesn't have to be stooping to the nasty tone of the GOP ads...assuming folks all realize those differences exist isn't enough...

Too much of the country still views this like a reality show, which is why Palin, the attractive "contestant" is still not being categorically dismissed by more people for her lack of real, global credentials.

The fact that perception/Image seems to play SUCH a big role in elections... seemingly more so than issues... is because I think voters realize that any candidate can make any promise during the campaign, BUT in fact may not have the power/ability/real desire to fulfil those promises... consequently, how they comport themselves and (the perception of) their values becomes what people will often base their final decision on.

[skirtingtheedge]

Let's bombard the MSM with this story. Email links below:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=111

[laocoon]

The definition of terrorism is so slippery I suppose one can call any one you want a terrorist and deny anyone else is who you dont want to be one. I always thought terrorism involved an act of violence or threatened violence directed at the civilian morale rather than targetting a military or industrial site for the direct damage. the shock and awe bombings of Iraq might be considered an attack of terrorism. Bombing civilian targets to affect morale is a classic example.

[Gib]

"Shock and awe" = terror.

[SurrealPumpkin]

I thought it was a town in Michigan, Shakinaw. (sorry, those of you from MI)

[clover2]

According to Alaskan radio host Shannyn Moore, Palin also ties to G. Gordon Liddy. She wanted to hire him as a lobbyist. If that's not an endorsement of the man and his misdeeds, I don't know what is.

[ThePeacemakers]

One more thing...Liddy is a bona-fide psycho. The media is probably more scared of him than they ever would be of Ayers.

[BillORights1776]

Well of course theres a big difference between Ayers and Liddy... Ayers wasn't convicted in a court of law.

Also interesting, when comparing Ayers to McCain...Ayers has been faithful to his wife and been married longer than McCain.