Judging them by the company they keep

May 5, 2008

The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman posed an interesting question in his column over the weekend about John McCain having a Bill Ayers-like problem of his own.

Can a presidential candidate justify a long and friendly relationship with someone who, back in the 1970s, extolled violence and committed crimes in the name of a radical ideology — and who has never shown remorse or admitted error? When the candidate in question is Barack Obama, John McCain says no. But when the candidate in question is John McCain, he’s not so sure.

Obama has been justly criticized for his ties to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, who in 1995 hosted a campaign event for Obama and in 2001 gave him a $200 contribution. The two have also served together on the board of a foundation. When their connection became known, McCain minced no words: “I think not only a repudiation but an apology for ever having anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist is due the American people.”

What McCain didn’t mention is that he has his own Bill Ayers — in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Now a conservative radio talk-show host, Liddy spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. That was just one element of what Liddy did, and proposed to do, in a secret White House effort to subvert the Constitution. Far from repudiating him, McCain has embraced him.

How close are McCain and Liddy? Pretty close. Liddy hosted a McCain fundraiser in ’98 at his home. When McCain appeared on Liddy’s show in November, Liddy greeted him as “an old friend,” and McCain gushed like one. “I’m proud of you, I’m proud of your family,” McCain told Liddy. “It’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.”

Given Liddy’s “principles,” McCain’s praise seems more than a little out of place.

Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn’t disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?

Liddy was in the thick of the biggest political scandal in American history–and one of the greatest threats to the rule of law. He has said he has no regrets about what he did, insisting that he went to jail as “a prisoner of war.”

All this may sound like ancient history. But it’s from the same era as the bombings Ayers helped carry out as a member of the Weather Underground. And Liddy’s penchant for extreme solutions has not abated.

In 1994, after the disastrous federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, he gave some advice to his listeners: “Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests. . . . Kill the sons of bitches.”

He later backed off, saying he meant merely that people should defend themselves if federal agents came with guns blazing. But his amended guidance was not exactly conciliatory: Liddy also said he should have recommended shots to the groin instead of the head. If that wasn’t enough to inflame any nut cases, he mentioned labeling targets “Bill” and “Hillary” when he practiced shooting.

McCain doesn’t distance himself from this guy; he embraces him, accepts his campaign donations, appears on his show, and praises his “principles.” And yet, McCain still feels perfectly comfortable demanding that Obama “apologize” for knowing Bill Ayers.

(On a related note, the NYT’s Frank Rich over the weekend highlighted the story that political reporters are reluctant to touch: McCain’s ties to bigoted televangelist John Hagee.)

To clarify, I’m not necessarily arguing that I want more guilt-by-association attacks in the presidential campaign. Major political figures meet and know plenty of people, some are going to be controversial, and some are going to be unsavory. In an election this important, there are far more important things to cover.

I do care, however, about consistency, hypocrisy, and fairness. If Wright is a reflection on Obama’s judgment and character, it’s incumbent on the media to take McCain’s suck-ups to Hagee, Parsley, and Falwell seriously. If it’s important that Obama knows Ayers, it has to be at least as important that McCain has picked G. Gordon Liddy as one of his buddies.

And if McCain is going to go after Obama directly over his associations, as he did last week, then McCain should expect similar questions about the company he keeps.

Why did McCain seek and accept the support of an anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic televangelist? Why did McCain cozy up to a preacher who blamed 9/11 on Americans? Why did McCain praise the principles of a right-wing shock jock who instructed his audience on where to shoot federal officials?

What’s good for the goose….

And G. Gordon Liddy toured with Timothy Leary.

  • And if I’m correct, doesn’t John McCain’s campaign incluse someone with white supremist ties? I’ll have to look up the name. He’s a real whack-job who sold Lincoln assassination t shirts.

  • Yeah, I remember, during the early Clinton years, he was so incensed over Ruby Ridge and Waco that he actually gave instructions on how to shoot those “jack-booted thugs”: Head shot! No body armour there!

    Jiminy Fuckin’ Cricket. Just imagine of a ‘democrat’ or ‘liberal’ had said something like that.

    And that is what has happened to the Republican party. They have been hijacked by the McVeys’, the Libbys’, the Koreshs’.

  • The McCain-Liddy connection is not likely to be reported by the media mongrels who are unable to remove their osculating lips from the butt of their maverick idol to inform the public of any news that does not exalt the object of their mindless and unwavering adoration.

  • Don’t forget about Elliot Abrams and Oliver North.

    Currently, Abrams works as a deputy in Bush’s National Security Agency and North is a correspondent for Faux News.

    Abrams and North were convicted in Federal court for lying about their roles in assisting central American death squads during the Reagan administration. Both had their convictions overturned by the kind of legal ‘technicality’ (their confessions were deemed inadmissible) that conservatives rail about when those technicalities are used by people who are poor or who have dark skin. Eventually, they were pardoned by George Herbert Hoover Bush.

    Abrams and North were firm believers in the “Kirkpatrick Doctrine” — the idea that it was so much worse for people to be tortured and killed by brutal dictators who pay lip service to communism than is it for people to be tortured and killed by brutal dictators who pay lip service to democracy that the U.S. should seek out and support dictators who pay lip service to democracy whenever we can.

    The death squads Abrams and North funded and supported used violence and intimidation against civilians to try to bring about the overthrow of governments the Reagan administration didn’t like. What do we call groups like that today?

    Oh yeah . . . terrorists.

    I’m sure that soon the corporate controlled media will begin demanding that John McCain repudiate Libby, Abrams and North, and apologize for ever having anything to do with them.

    Any minute now . . .

    Any minute . . .

    (sound of crickets chirping)

  • a letter to the editor of the very same chicago tribune said saturday:

    “i’ve learned this campaign that barack obama is personally responisible for what comes out of the mouth of everyone he’s ever met, while john mccain isn’t responsible for what comes out of his own mouth.”

    that about sums it up.

  • I have never been able to understand the “rehabilitation” of the unrepentant fascist goon, G. Gordon Liddy. He is apparently extremely personable when you meet him in person, and he appears to “accept” that others disagree with him and doesn’t hold that against becoming friends. In one way, this is actually admirable, if it wasn’t for the fact he then goes on his show and advocates the assassination of people who share the politics of his “friends.”

    But look at the fact that he and Al Franken are in fact good friends – not only in public but in private! You can’t get further apart than that.

    This rehabilitation began, I think, when he was cast as an unrepentant racist, fascist, paramilitary pro-Contra mercenary back on “Miami Vice.”

    Nobody is going to get any traction from calling out McCain for being friends with everybody’s favorite winghut. Unfortunately.

  • Comparing Liddy to Bill Ayers?!? Now there’s a stretch of the imagination.

    Spending 20 years with Wright and his racist church…being married by him…allowing him and his church to teach your daughters is also a tad different than having the endorsement of some “white televangelist”. Obama has some strange endorsements also – Ahmed Yousef (“chief political adviser to the Prime Minister of Hamas”), Malik Zulu Shabazz (endorsement on Obama’s own website from the New Black Panther Party), “Muslim American for Obama’ 08” (have “denounced Obama’s colleagues in the U.S. Senate who happen to be Jewish”), “Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)”, FARC and Hugo Chavez, communist Daniel Ortega, communist Tom Hayden, and “Muslim racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan”, to name a few of Obama’s endorsements.

    Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are ‘former’ Weathermen terrorists, who still hate America. Wright…well, we have all seen what he is about, and still wonder why Obama spent 20+ years with him…so to speak of the “company” that Obama kept and keeps.

    Then there are Obama’s own foreign policy advisors, many of who are “notoriously anti-Israel and anti-Semitic”, and his connections and support to, and for, non-profit terrorist-supporting organizations that “raise money for Muslim terrorist refugee camps in the Middle East.”

  • I would go beyond challenging McCain on connections to the crazy RW preachers. I would make the statements of all the RW media darlings – Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, etc. – part of the dialog.

    These people routinely say outrageous things, yet are welcome on any teevee, any radio show, at any time, without any question or concern. They are the RW mainstream, accepted as Serious by the media generally. Yet they say things routinely that are certainly no less insane than Wright said at his worst, and are generally far more harmful to productive dialog in this country than Wright. They are intentionally divisive, they routinely threaten anyone outside of their camp, they never use words to seek an improvement in the national condition – which Wright does all the time. This would be a good time to take them on generally. Perhaps we could start with Limbaugh dreaming of riots in Denver.

    Over at Think Progress, you can watch John Bolton say: ” I think this is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do. ” And he is a Serious Man.
    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/05/bolton-iran-strike-prudent/

  • is also a tad different than having the endorsement of some “white televangelist”. Obama has some strange endorsements also

    Uh, anyone can endorse anyone. However, McCain sought out Hagee.

    • Comments are closed.