It’s been widely reported that Barack Obama began his first political campaign, for the Illinois State Senate, at the home of his friends Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Until recently, Obama has sought to downplay the relationship but has not denied that basic fact. It was therefore surprising when Obama, in the third Presidential debate, said it is “absolutely not true” that he “launched [his] political campaign in Mr. Ayers’ living room.” At the time, I assumed that maybe the gathering had been in Ayers’ kitchen.
It didn’t take long for Obama campaign auxiliaries like the Los Angeles Times to weigh in with the claim that there is “no recorded basis” for the statement that Ayers and Dohrn hosted Obama’s first campaign event. The invaluable Patterico responded with a link to an online account by Obama supporter Maria Warren dated January 27, 2005:
When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the livingroom of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him-introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.
Now, Patterico reports that the above blog post has been deleted. However, it’s still on the Wayback Machine, and Patterico, anticipating the cover-up, preserved a screen shot.
One wonders whether there is any dishonesty that Barack Obama and his supporters will not countenance. Obama makes a statement in the debate that is either an outright falsehood, or at best, deeply misleading. (It is possible, I suppose, that Ayers and Dohrn hosted Obama’s second campaign event rather than his first.) The press, rather than calling Obama on his misrepresentation, backs him up. Finally, an effort is made to cover up for Obama by destroying evidence that he lied.
Barack Obama is obviously a candidate who believes that the end–his election–justifies any means, no matter how dishonest. He is not the first Presidential candidate to harbor such a conviction. There was a time, though, when newspaper reporters thought it was part of their job to keep such candidates honest, rather than enabling their deceit.
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