CNN: Now, if someone was seen as an acceptable figure by business, political and education figures, many of whom support both Democrats and Republicans, should Obama be faulted for sitting on a board with the guy?
So, let's use that same logic and apply it to McCain.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., a Democrat from Chicago who serves as one of the national co-chairs for Obama, told me on The Tom Joyner Morning Show that if we are to use the association tag as evidence of a candidate being unfit for president, what about McCain serving and working alongside people with virulent bigoted pasts like Sens. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Byrd?
Do we have evidence that these individuals committed specific acts against African-Americans during Jim Crow? No. But we do know that their hateful words, and willingness to uphold laws that were absolutely anti-American, did not represent the best of this nation.
Thurmond ran for president as a Dixiecrat in 1948 with a platform of maintaining segregation. Based on Helms' policies, he didn't see blacks as full Americans.
Bombing the Pentagon is horrible and indefensible. But declaring yourself a patriot while you speak such hateful and venomous words against your own countrymen, who just happen to be black, and then trying to oppress them, is just as indefensible.
So, did McCain work with them? Did he not speak with them? Should McCain have declared that he would not work alongside these men because of their past? Should the self-described maverick who believes in integrity and character have taken the honorable stance of resigning from the Senate to protest these hateful characters serving in the U.S. Senate?
No. And this is why this association argument is so weak and impotent.
For goodness' sakes, Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, a domestic terrorist organization!
Now, if Ayers was involved in these despicable acts today -- or Byrd and his late Senate colleagues -- then it is fair game.
But no candidate should have to be held responsible for the actions of someone else that took place years ago.
For some of us this makes sense but McCain has adopted the wingnut mode of attack -- that Obama is a secret radical Muslim terrorist. We don't know if McCain truly believes that or if he's just exploiting that smear in an attempt to win an election.
