Obama: McCain camp brings up Ayers to score points
During campaign stops last weekend, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin criticized Obama's ties to William Ayers, a founder of the violent Weather Underground group blamed for several acts of domestic terrorism during the Vietnam War era, when Obama was a child.
Palin first accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists," then recalibrated her criticism to say the lack of clarity about the Ayers-Obama relationship was a legitimate campaign issue because it speaks to Obama's truthfulness and judgment.
Obama told ABC News in an interview Wednesday that he has said many times that Ayers "engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old" and that he was an education professor at the University of Illinois when they met 10 or 15 years ago.
Obama said Ayers served with him on a school reform board and that they have discussed school reform issues. Ayers also hosted a small, meet-the-candidate event for Obama in 1995, when he first ran for public office. Obama senior adviser David Axelrod has said Obama was unaware of Ayers' radical background at the time.
"The notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that he — I've palled around with a terrorist, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points. And, you know, the idea that the McCain campaign would want to make this the centerpiece of the discussion in the closing weeks of a campaign where we are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and we're in the middle of two wars, I think makes very little sense not just to me but to the American people," Obama said in the interview.
"Look, I can handle these attacks for the remaining four weeks," he said, "but it's certainly not serving our democracy right now."
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