The McCain campaign shows no shame in engaging in a tired guilt-by-association tactic as Sarah Palin accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists." This desperate calumny derives from Obama once serving on the same non-profit board as former 60's radical Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground.
But what about McCain's own associations with former 60's radicals. Indeed, until just a few years ago, McCain openly boasted not only about his passing friendship but also his deep collaboration with one of the most prominent of Vietnam-era student radicals, David Ifshin. The same David Ifshin who denounced America on Radio Hanoi as McCain sat locked up as a POW.
I met Ifshin about the same time he came into McCain's life. But under very different circumstances. In 1970, as president of the left-leaning National Student Association, Ifshin traveled to North Vietnam with other anti-war radicals and it was then that he went on Radio Hanoi to denounce his own country's war effort. That broadcast was piped directly into POW McCain's cell in the Hanoi Hilton and he was understandably enraged by what he thought was a traitorous act by a fellow American.
I crossed paths with the same David Ifshin a few months later when he showed up in Chile with folksinger Phil Ochs and Yippie leader Jerry Rubin. We spent some days together n Santiago and I can personally attest that while Ifshin never went as far as Ayres did in becoming a literal bomb-thrower, he was very much emblematic of a generation of radical dissidents. Ifshin had risen to notoriety by leading the takeover of his Syracuse university campus. He opened up his NSA offices to radicals trying to shut down Washington DC with streets protests in May 1971. Just after their sojourn in Chile, Ifshin and Ochs went on to Uruguay, joined a local university takeover and were arrested and deported.
As the years passed, Ifshin - just like Ayers-- eventually moved into the American political mainstream. Ayers came out of the underground, took up education as a profession and staked himself out on the non-violent political left. Ifshin moved more quickly to the center and eventually became General Counsel to the Bill Clinton campaign as well as a prominent leader in pro-Israeli causes. But until the day he died, at age 47 in 1996, Ifshin never renounced nor apologized for his youthful, radical past.
In the meantime, and much to his credit, Senator John McCain forged a close personal friendship with Ifshin, as well as a working political alliance. Together they worked to establish the Institute for Democracy in Vietnam and partnered up on the issue of normalization of relations with Vietnam.
As recently as two years ago, speaking at Columbia College, McCain affectionately and warmly recalled his relationship with Ifshin saying:
"We worked together in an organization dedicated to promoting human rights in the country where he and I had once come for different reasons. I came to admire him for his generosity, his passion for his ideals, for the largeness of his heart, and I realized he had not been my enemy, but my countryman . . . my countryman ...and later my friend. His friendship honored me. We disagreed over much. Our politics were often opposed, and we argued those disagreements. But we worked together for our shared ideals."
That John McCain is unrecognizable from the man who today stands behind the scurrilous attacks suggesting that Barack Obama pals around with terrorists because Bill Ayres - when Obama was literally eight years old--stupidly fancied himself an armed revolutionary.
The old John McCain was able to overcome his own repulsion against a young man who went on the radio station of the enemy who was holding and torturing him and built a warm friendship with him. If Obama were to run commercials today criticizing McCain for hanging out with the Tokyo Rose of the Vietnam era, it would be nearly as execrable as the McCain campaign's current smears around Bill Ayres.
I've been reading The Huff for six months and just now signed up so I can comment about your work. This is an outstanding piece. Not as a gotcha or a tit-for-tat expose, but as a moving story of how enemies and strange bedfellows can sometimes become friends and/or acquaintances. The juxtaposition of the McCain of old, who could actually forgive a snotty radical for what was piped into his POW cell, and moving on to, not just agree to disagree but, actually developing a degree of friendship was both moving and touching. I could actually vote for THAT John McCain. More importantly though, your work expertly illustrates how the company we keep is... the same company everybody keeps, and that the McCain camp's use of Bill Ayers is as disingenuous as it is unimportant. Of course, THAT McCain I won't be voting for. Thanks for this exceptional piece.
rachel@msnbc.com
It thoroughly exposes the McCain hypocrisy, and shows that the campaign is just posing, with nothing behind it but to inflame people.
Obama should commend McCain for this and put an end to the 60s radical thing.
Obama isn't taking the bait on any of this stuff, which is what the McCain campaign is really after: Getting the MSM to start covering a dogfight over trivia -- any trivia, as long as it's something other than the economy.
If the questions at the "town hall" the other night are any indication, most American voters don't care about that. They care about losing their jobs, their homes, their retirement, their kid's college funds. They want to hear what the next administration is going to do about those things.
Even though I risk a "there you go again" from Sarah, remember the first Clinton campaign: "It's the economy, stupid!"
GOP claims that he was "totally exonerated" are incorrect---he was formally censured by the Senate for "poor judgement!"
The current bank failures are Keating-like to the Nth degree---total deregulation and lack of oversight of the banking industry.
As proof that McCain has NOT learned his lesson, CBS News now reports that he must have failed to counsel his son, Andrew, who was CEO of Silver State Bank in Nevada until 2 weeks before it failed last month. (Not to worry, Andrew got his Golden Parachute and was able to find another job with his Mom's beer company!:)
McCain may not be an economics expert but he sure knows how to use the banking indusrty for his own personal profit.
I just don't understand the news media. They're quick to post the untrue, embellished or twisted articles on Obama, but McCain's true-to-life skeletons are kept on the last line of the last page or in the closet!!!
Obama has a habit of denying every bad thing in his life until it becomes so absolutely undenyable that it hurts his campaign. . . . then he ends up with egg on his face.
Fact: Obama has been going negative with his campaign as far back as Hillary and for him to pretend he isn't going negative makes him look like a hypocrite in my eyes. . .. .
Seriously, you're embarrassing yourself: the whole point of this is how stupid these discussions of who-knew-someone-40-years-ago are, and when McCain's campaign acts like "I got ya!" it just shows petty hypocrisy. But the worst part is it totally distracts from discussions of issues that actually matter. Or maybe that's McCain's goal?
McCain eats his PWN face.
It seems that questioning McCain's military record is taboo, even though, objectively considered, the facts unquestionably show that he was a collaborator. There were UPI news stories about McCain's broadcasts at the time. These could be dug up. "Songbird Song of Admiral..." ran one headline. If McCain wants to get ugly, then get ugly back. McCain spent between 10 and 15 hours in combat in Vietnam and has been boasting about it for 40 years. It's time to look more closely at the record of this so-called war hero.
Why is it that the Democrats always insist on playing by the Queensberry rules when the Republicans come up and knee them in the groin?
McCain looks petty, feeble, pathetic and just plain desperate.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27034205/
MR. BEGALA: ... I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back—I’ve written a book about McCain. I had a dozen researchers go through him. I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization. It was the U.S. Council for World Freedom. It was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. It was an ultraconservative right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981, when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League, the parent organization, which ADL said, “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and Anti-Semites.” Now, that’s not John McCain. I don’t think he is that. But, but, you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin, and he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.
Cindy McCain's father was involved with some pretty unsavory characters when he started his beer company
Palin has refused to address her connections and her family's to Ayran/Neo-Nazi groups in Idaho and the summer camps she attended when she was growing up.
Also, Palin has not addressed concerns about her attendance at Alaskan Independent Party meetings and Todd Palin's involvement with this movement.
These issues need to be addressed as well as McCain's involvement, Pat Cunningham, David Ifshin and with his son Andrew McCain failed bank Silver State AND Keating Savings and Loan also the lobbyists who work on McCain's campaign that have worked on behalf of Iran and Syria and several evil African dictators.
I really hope the Obama surrogates go out and broadcast all of McCain and Palin's questionable ties and associations.
And I also look forward to the day when people will skulk around in shame, heads hung low, taking side streets to avoid being seen, wearing hoodies and low-brimmed hats, because they were known associates, accomplices, even members of the Republican Party. I'd even look forward to having one of those internet-based websites, we could call it "Sarah and John's Place," where you look up your neighbors to see if they were associated with these collaborators, those who would destroy our country, be sure to tell your kids to cross the street and avoid these disgraceful traitors.
I will always support and defend people's right of free speech and ability to disagree with government tyranny. I will never support people killing police officers and other innocent bystanders in the name of free speech