Can Obama Survive the Annenberg Cover-up?

Throughout the summer months, many voters supporting John McCain have been frustrated by his failure to respond forcefully to Obama's charges against him. I felt his failure to swat about at each charge was because he was an old fighter pilot, taught to hold his fire and stay concealed as long as possible. If circumstances permitted, he would not budge until his opponent had made a potentially fatal move from which it was going to be exceedingly hard to extricate himself. Whether my assessment was right or not, it appears that the moment to strike has arrived, and like the old fighter pilot descending from the cloud cover, McCain has taken full advantage of Obama's errors to place him in a position from which I can see no way out for him.

I'm talking about Obama's role in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and his ill-conceived ad attacking McCain's associations which opened the door for McCain to bring to public view something Obama has -- with clear media connivance -- lied about and tried to conceal: His close association with William Ayers in a program he botched.

The last thing Obama should want made public are his dubious associates. The public has had some exposure to his long time spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, many have heard of the convicted Chicago fixer Tony Rezko, and some have just a bit of knowledge about William Ayers. As McCain said Wednesday: "[I]f Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let's start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama's political career was reportedly launched . Mr. Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground, a terrorist group responsible for countless bombings against targets including the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and numerous police stations, courthouses and banks. In recent years Mr. Ayers has stated, ‘I don't regret setting bombs. ... I feel we didn't do enough.'"

The background of this matter has been hashed out for some months online at Slate, The American Thinker, Just One Minute and Global Labor. National Review Online joined in more recently. But if you missed the story or were unable to keep up with it, it began when Obama lied about the extent of his relationship with Ayers and the press gave him a pass. Obama gave varying accounts of this relationship:

"...a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received an official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from (sic) on a regular basis."

"Now, Mr. Ayres is a 60 plus year old individual who lives in my neighborhood, who did something I deplore 40 years ago when I was six or seven years old. By the time I met him, he was a professor of education at the University of Illinois."

So, the story was that Ayers was an old professor in Mr. Obama's neighborhood who just happened to host a fundraiser for him in 1995 which launched his political career.