Sam Smith
Listening to the sordid efforts by McCain and Palin to tie Obama to onetime Weatherman Bill Ayers brought to mind the challenge to the 1903 seating of Republican Reed Smoot of Utah, the first Mormon ever elected Senator. Mormon polygamy was central to the dispute and, in the course of the debate, a Smoot supporter, Senator Boes Penrose of Pennsylvania, looked at some of this colleages known for their adulterous activities and said, "As for me, I would rather have seated beside me in this chamber a polygamist who doesn't polyg than a monogamist who doesn't monog."
Anyone who spends more than fifteen minutes listening to Barack Obama should be aware that however many meetings he attended with Ayers they did not have the slightest effect. You don't need an ex-weatherman to know which way Obama is blowing and most of the time he's becalmed. The only thing Obama could possibly bomb would be his own campaign, but that is not because of any covert radicalism but because of a fear of saying anything that might upset anyone anytime.
On the other hand, patriot pretender Sarah Palin still sleeps with the First Dude who was, except for a brief time, a member of the Alaska Independence Party from 1995 to 2002. Palin herself went to the 1994 and 2000 conventions of the group and addressed it this year. The founder of the group once summarized his feelings like this: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. . . And I won't be buried under their damn flag."
Furthermore. Obama's other purportedly evil pal, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, never had anyone jailed and then chased out of town for being a witch as did one of Palin's favorite pastors.
So who would you rather have in Washington: a cautious, boring attorney who attended a few meetings with a Weatherman or an Alaskan governor who lives with a guy who wanted to dump America entirely?
And while we're asking about such matters, isn't it time for McCain to either shut up about Obama's associations or give us the names of everyone he has played poker or shot craps with over the past 20 years? Bet that would change the national conversation in a hurry.
