The Election Year Coda of Bill Ayers

With the votes counted, William Ayers, former leader of the Weather Underground, "unrepentant terrorist," Obama's "pal," speaks on his prior dealings with the President-Elect and inculpates Hillary Clinton as the but-for cause for GOP character assailments:

During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him, I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism—and they pounced.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script, which included guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known), creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet to be uncovered.

He cannot resist the visceral urge to take a cruel, ironically radical cheap shot at John McCain:

It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the ’60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam . . .

The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids—like the one conducted by McCain—and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance—an immoral enterprise by any measure.

And he visualizes the tableau conjured up by Governor Palin:

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.) The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.

Asked to comment on Bill Ayers's summation of the past few months, Reverend Wright bellowed, "NOT GOD BLESS, MCCAIN. GOD DAMN MCCAIN! NOT JOHN MCCAIN, BUT JOHN MC-K-K-K-CAIN. CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST! WOOOOOOOOO! WOOOOOOOOO!"

Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko could not be reached for comment.