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

[Wilburrr]

If McCain doesn't bring this up in the next and last debate, I think I would like to see Obama confront him on it directly; prefaced with the statement that Obama has worked on a board with conservative Republicans who were making efforts to improve the public educational system in Chicago. Running down the list of board members, with Ayers being named last, would certainly present an interesting problem for McCain to explain. Especially if Obama points out that the only thing 'radical' about this board is that they are working to make 'radical changes in the way subjects are taught and students learn.'

[Isis905]

I've been wondering for some time now, why no one has brought up Sarah's affiliation with the Alaskan Independence Party. Wouldn't that organization be considered treasonist? I mean, c'mon. Those people want to secede from the United States, I dunno about you, but that sounds unpatriotic to me. I think the Obama/Biden campaign is a little to classy for such a thing...which is really refreshing.

[NoNotAgain]

Isis905 , I agree with you. Robert Kennedy Jr mentioned it on Larry King last week.

But no one will touch it. Has all the media sold out. King did not explore it to any degree..

This is scary to me.What is going on ?????????????????

[PACRAT]

McCain hopes that no one pays attention to his terrorist or strange friends

It's well known that McCain hangs around with conservative republicans, Bushies, evangelical demagogues, convicted felons, and "that woman" from Alaska. Sorry crew.

And he has the nerve to accuse Obama of hanging around with terrorists - especially when he was eighty years old at the time?

Poor old man!

[koyak23]

McCain is proud of an unrepentant domestic terrorist ? McCain pals around with a man who served 5 years for crimes against our country? McCain has a campaign fund raiser hosted by a domestic terrorist ?

Who is John McCain ? I don't care about G.Gordon Liddy,but McCain needs to be honest with the American people and explain this relationship with an erstwhile would-be assassin who hates our Constitutional American way of life.

[leeannethethird]

Thank you CARL! An additional shorter version would help broadcast the message.

[john42]

Then why-oh-why does Obama dance around and try to hide his relationships with Ayers [and ACORN]? It is obvious that Ayers is more than just a guy in the neighborhood, so this Texas-style two-step makes me wonder if, in his adult life, the guy has ever admitted to a mistake or even looks critically inward to better himself. His self-esteem seems so low and his skin so thin, he can't emotionally admit to a screw-up or lax judgement. If it wasn't a mistake, he should stand up to his critics instead of ducking.

[Chironomid]

Obama has explained his relationship -- the two serve together along with several others on a charitable board funded by the Annenberg Foundation, a conservative organization whose matriarch has endorsed John McCain. I have served in charitable foundations in my own life -- you work together with people who come from a variety of backgrounds, and you become friendly, which is not the same as "friends". Anyone who works in a job involving people knows the difference between "friendly" and "friends". The campaign launch in Ayers' house? Arranged by another politician trying to give him a leg up, and he was probably about 30 years old at the time. Ever make a bad judgment when you were 30? Are you even 30? That's not a dig -- I'm just pointing out that there is important life perspective that you don't have at that age.

I will give you that Obama was probably a little embarrassed about this and tried to skirt it initially, but he's come clean on it and it's a big reach to say he has no self-esteem and is thin-skinned. Thin-skinned? Did you see McCain in the Des Moines Register interview? THAT's thin-skinned.

If even a whiff of bad association is a disqualifier, then we need to boot all the candidates off the ticket and start over. In a blow-by-blow recount of bad associations, the McCain-Palin list would be exhausting just to list, much less discuss.

[CyrusBeaucephus]

How was his meeting Ayers a 'mistake', as you say? There's nothing to defend, explain, or deny, and the only people who think other wise are already voting for the Party that NEVER DMITS MISTAKES (hint that would be the always-wrong GOP)

[LDnearthesea]

And when is McCain going to explain why he joined the World Anti-Communist League at a time when it was known that it backed right-wing death squads in central America that killed Jesuit priests?

[Pinkmarbles]

Obama shields ACORN from Criminal
Prosecution in the Economic Crisis
Canada Free Press, by Marinka Peschmann

Original Article

Posted By:drive, 10/14/2008 8:01:07 AM

Not only did Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign pay more than U.S. $800,000 to a front of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform, Now, ACORN, currently under investigation in a dozen States for voter registration fraud and bribery schemes, for “get-out-the-vote-efforts”; Obama co-sponsored legislation called the “Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2007”-- that was supported by ACORN and protects them.

[PJNoir]

I'm no G Gordon L fan but I'm amazed how easily one can be labeled a terrorist. Soon we will only have terrorists and heroes, but ill defined.

[TullyMars]

I've read a lot about McCain's association with Liddy lately. I read Liddy's autobiography some years ago, too. He clearly is a whack job. But I can't figure out why the O campaign hasn't pointed this out. Maybe O really wants to talk about the issues. Maybe he really means what he says. Perhaps O realizes that, as President, he needs to be a role model... for all of us.

[Isis905]

What? A Presidential candidate that's ACTUALLY TRULY interested in the country's real issues. Aw man, what's next...free will?

[fireW]

When are the media and the Obama campaign going to start discussing the McCain-Annenberg-Ayers connection? Is Ayers only a terrorist when he is is distantly associated with Obama and not with McCain? That Palin would spew misleading nonsense ad nauseum shouid surprise no one; but the Garbage Talk Express has run off the rails on this one. I hope it gets discussed in the upcoming debate, so the roaring rodents can then explain to all of us why the ridiculous Ayers hypocrisy is legitimate.

[Academic]

My grandmother always used to say that to be a good liar you've first got to remember all your past lies. Of course she's right. The trouble with John McCain and those who think like he does is that they forget this first and most significant rule at their peril, and it's clear that in bringing up the Bill Ayers issue John Mccain and his surrogates have done just that. How pathetic when you look at it realistically. Instead of concentrating on and dealing with the real issues that blight America and the prosperity of Americans we have this man dreging up non-issues. I guess the old Biblical warning is quite apt here. And I paraphrase - beware of those who draw attention to the faults of others when their own lives are like the insides of sepulchres. Odd that Sarah Palin - the arch Christian supposedly - didn't remind John McCain of this.

Professor Dr. Stanley Collymore.

[Chironomid]

And, more simply... As you sow, so shall you reap.

[nwspud]

I wonder if this flirty, eye winking governor of Alaska has any idea who G. Gordon Liddy is? Or what party tricky Dick hailed from. We know she had never given any thought nor perhaps had even heard of the Bush Doctrine. Think she could touch on the effect eliminating the uptick rule had on the trillion we've lost in retirement accounts?? What sense of history could someone realistically acquire when the contents of their nightstand exclude any volume of critical thought? Let's imagine: Shut Up and Sing?; perhaps that book on on virtues by Bill Bennet, and maybe a Field and Stream? I seriously doubt she has even read those as it appears that she is clearly the product of the last 20 years of AM radio doggoneit!!! So when she starts slingin' the Ayers mud at Obama, I just can't help but pity her because I too graduated from the University of Idaho, but I am mighty thankful that I spent more than one year there (as she never quite collegiately settled anywhere apparently) so as not to learn to just take the test, and, whew, finish college, but to actually form relationships with learned profs who taught one to be skeptical. Thank you Moscow, ID. I am sorry to say that if this woman gets anywhere close to the west wing after the election I am stowing away on that spacecraft with Tina......and for the record, I do a pretty good Todd Palin.

[ARTIST50]

Thank you for that thoughtful response. The thing about Palin is that they just put out a report that said she abused her power and she read that it said she didn't abuse her power. So no matter what books she reads, she obviously can't read! Did that make sense? Well, that's Palin speak!

[MarcoEsquandolas]

there'd be no TrooperGATE, even, if not for the waterGATE hotel...

[MatoSka]

Carl,

The issue that you don't really address is: how does one establish a moral equivalency between the one and the other? It is even more fair to ask: why is it necessary to try and establish such an equivalency? That's the job of Obama's campaign.
Your journalistic ethic appears caught up in electoral politics.

[DrDemon]

Well I doubt Ayers will be coming up now (on Wednesday-debate)!

And if so, I hope Obama is armed with this dirt!