Bill Ayers Is a Nice Guy

In a desperate attempt to link Barack Obama to a 1960s culture war he’s too young to remember, John McCain has spent his last shred of political capital attacking Bill Ayers, Obama’s supposed terrorist pal. “I can personally attest to the idiocy of it all,” writes Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal, “because I am a friend of Mr. Ayers.”

“Bill’s got a lot of friends,” Frank assures us. “He may once have been wanted by the FBI” but since then he’s “become such a good citizen that he ought to be an honorary Eagle Scout.” Ayers is a widely esteemed professor, a member of countless foundations, and a tireless charity volunteer. Attacking so harmless a man isn’t putting “country first,” it’s old-fashioned demagoguery, wriets Frank.
(More Election 2008 stories.)