Obama Draws Attention to Devastating Ad Connecting Him to Domestic Terrorist

After the Swift Boat ads in 2004 took a heavy toll on John Kerry, Democrats swore they'd never allow attacks like that to go unanswered again. Unfortunately for them, their response to an ad linking Obama to friend and domestic terrorist William Ayers has served to draw attention to information that might otherwise have been ignored by much of the media:

DENVER (AP) - Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign.

Obama not only aired a response ad to the spot linking him to William Ayers, but he sought to block stations the commercial by warning station managers and asking the Justice Department to intervene. The campaign also planned to compel advertisers to pressure stations that continue to air the anti-Obama commercial.

It's the type of going-for-the-jugular approach to politics many Democrats complain that Kerry lacked and that Republicans exploit.

Obama's target is an ad by the conservative American Issues Project, a nonprofit group that questions Obama's ties to Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground organization that took credit for a series of bombings, including nonfatal explosions at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol four decades ago.

The lone financier of the anti-Obama ad, Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, was also one of the main funders of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who targeted Kerry. Simmons, a McCain fundraiser, contributed nearly $2.9 million to the American Issues Project, according to documents filed by the group with the Federal Election Commission.

Fox News and CNN have declined to air the anti-Obama ad. But by Monday afternoon, the ad had run about 150 times in local markets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Michigan, according to Evan Tracey, head of TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, an ad tracking firm.

Obama's campaign decided to run a response ad of its own that included this lame excuse:

ANNCR: With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the sixties, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?

McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers’ crimes, committed when Obama was just eight years old.

That gave the McCain campaign a chance to jump on an issue they weren't going to touch:

A McCain spokesman fired back: “The fact that Barack Obama chose to launch his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist raises more questions about his judgment than any ad ever could. And the fact that he’s launching his own convention by defending his long association with a man who says he didn’t bomb enough U.S. targets tells us more about Barack Obama than any of tonight’s speeches will.”

William Ayers is now fair game in the campaign and it goes directly to Obama's judgment. If you had a fried as an adult and you found out that guy had tried to blow up various government facilities when you were 8 years old and was still unrepentant about those murderous activities, would you continue the relationship? The fact that Obama not only continued to work with Ayers and call him a friend tells us that not only doesn't Obama condemn Ayers terrorist activities, but he apparently doesn't think they were all that serious.

As Obama's people try to make an issue out of the number of homes owned by John McCain, the real question was offered by one wag:

What's important is not how many buildings John McCain owns, but how many buildings Obama's friend William Ayers tried to blow up.

Exactly.