How to Answer the Ayers Question Tonight

Cuz you know it's coming, right?

Look, let me clear up once and for all the rumors about me and this man.

Three points:

One, we're hardly friends, let alone "pals." My interactions with him have mainly been that we happened to work for a couple of the same charitable causes in Chicago over the last decade. Now it's true he did contribute--once--to one of my many state senate campaigns. A one-time donation $200--so, hardly a significant amount and I never considered him a "major" contributor. I did once go to his house, but it was to attend a function honoring another local politician, not myself.

Second, the only reason we met is that we both happened to be involved with a charitable education program called the Annenberg Program. Now that's a very famous name, Annenberg--famous for philanthropy, but also a famous Republican name. Mr. Annenberg was an ambassador for Richard Nixon and Mrs. Annenberg--irony of ironies--is now a supporter of Senator McCain's! In fact: Senator McCain, just this week, issued a press release stating he was proud to have her endorsement. So I say to you, Senator McCain, if you think working with Mr. Ayers is so reprehensible, why don't you ask Mrs. Annenberg herself. I'm sure she would resent being accused of "palling around with terrorists" and rightfully so.

Third, let me say this: I have no admiration or sympathy with William Ayers for what he did as part of the Weather Underground thirty, forty years ago. As I've said, I'm 47 years old, so I was merely a child, when this was happening in the 1960s and 70s, and so wasn't really that conscious of this at the time, of course. I had enough problems in my own family growing up. Later I heard about the Weather Underground, but I certainly didn't memorize all their individual names. So when I first met Mr. William Ayers in Chicago decades later, I met him as an education researcher and theorist as part of this very respectable Annenberg project that was doing a lot of good, I might add, for the public school system there. An issue I cared a lot about. A lot.

I admit, that when I eventually was told more about his background I did not sever all ties. I admit that, and you, Senator McCain and the American people will just have to judge me on that, yes. But I wasn't about to walk away from an important and successful education project over this.

Now I have never, never expressed any sympathy or condonement of the Weather Underground bombings. While the physical damage they inflicted was relatively small, they did take a few lives and they did severely damage property. In my mind Mr. Ayers can claim no justification--none at all--for these actions, even though he was not directly responsible for any of the deaths. I only wish he had been punished to the full extent of the law. As it happens his trial was dismissed thirty years ago due to obstruction of justice and abuse of power during the Watergate days. So, while I wish that weren't the case, our justice system has dealt with him and many, many honorable citizens today would say he has rehabilitated himself into a law-abiding citizen.

That's the whole story. Aside from those Annenberg meetings, some later meetings he attended for the group I was a community organizer for in the same neighborhood, and just running into him on the streets of the South Side of Chicago, that's all I've had to do with the man. To suggest I'm "palling around" with this man, whoever he may be, is simply mischaracterizing and misleading. To say I'm "palling around with terrorists"--plural, mind you--really does approach slander, sir.