Chicago Terrorists

Greg Hinz, a reporter for Chicago Business, one of the many Crain’s publications that cover business in the US, wrote the following article on October 13, 2008. It identified the other people on the same committee with Obama and Bill Ayers. Guess they were ‘pallin around with terrorists” also.

Behind in the polls and running out of time to change the subject from the sinking economy, the McCain/Palin campaign has gone hyper trying to morph Chicago Weatherman-turned-professor Bill Ayers into Barack Obama's soul mate.

Mr. Obama can't be trusted because he's not one of us, Sarah Palin keeps suggesting. "I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who has targeted his own country," she declared.

Well, Mr. Obama apparently had a lot of company at work. Among those who served on the boards of the two Chicago charities at the heart of the Ayers-Obama "connection" are the former president of Northwestern University, the head of the city's most powerful business group, officials from petroleum giant BP Amoco and banking heavyweight UBS, and the ex-publisher of a noted liberal rag, the Chicago Tribune.

Kinda gives it a different spin, no? The story of the Ayers affair isn't that the radical Vietnam-era protester was embraced by Mr. Obama. The story is that a wide swath of Chicago's establishment, rightly or wrongly, gave Mr. Ayers a second chance — and that Mr. Obama, not one to challenge Chicago's power structure, raised no objections.

Mr. Ayers, of course, is the son of William Ayers, who used to run Commonwealth Edison Co. That likely didn't hurt him when he resurfaced, took a teaching post at the University of Illinois at Chicago and became a big player in the burgeoning school-reform move here.

Mr. Ayers, who declines to comment, apparently is good at school stuff. His fans include Mayor Richard M. Daley and numerous educators.

By the mid-1990s, Mr. Ayers was active with a group trying to get a foundation spawned by billionaire and Nixon administration ambassador Walter Annenberg to invest $50 million in Chicago schools. Key to the effort were three women who headed powerful local foundations: Joyce's Deborah Leff, MacArthur's Adele Simmons and Spencer's Patricia Graham.

All told me the same thing: They knew of Mr. Obama (he served on the Joyce board), liked his work and asked him to chair the Annenberg effort. Though Mr. Ayers co-wrote the Annenberg application, he "played no role in my recruiting Obama," Ms. Graham says in an e-mail.

Among those Mr. Obama recruited for his board, says Ms. Simmons: industrialist Susan Crown, former University of Illinois President Stanley Ikenberry and ex-NU chief Arnold Weber. Publisher Scott Smith and former Continental Bank exec Edward Bottum also served, Ms. Graham says.

A bit later, Messrs. Obama and Ayers overlapped again on the board of the Woods Fund, which helps community and arts groups. Among others on the board during Mr. Ayers' tenure, which continues to this day: BP's Midwest community affairs director, USB Investment Bank's public affairs chief and R. Eden Martin, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club.

Mr. Martin knew of Mr. Ayers' past. "One can simultaneously have one's own opinion about things that occurred 35 years ago and deal with them on contemporary issues." He adds, "Ostracism, excommunication is not the way we usually run our lives."
The only other known joint activity between Hyde Parkers Obama and Ayers came in 1995, when Mr. Obama declared for the state Senate and attended a brunch with about 10 people at Mr. Ayers' nearby home.

Mr. Obama "launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist," Ms. Palin says. But others active in these events, including Dr. Quentin Young and Rabbi A. J. Wolf, say the coffee was one of several held that day and may not have been the first.

That's pretty thin backing for the "pals" stuff being peddled, particularly when a bipartisan probe in Alaska concluded that Gov. Palin abused her authority by seeking to fire a family foe.

Team McCain is on stronger ground in suggesting that Mr. Obama is tight with Chicago's power structure and has co-existed with, not challenged, Mr. Daley. But that's a harder spin. It certainly isn't as sexy as screaming about domestic terrorists and their fellow travelers in the living room.