WW, out of curiosity, did you read the WSJ op-ed? There are two problems with Ayers IMO:
1) that he is an admitted domestic terrorist that promoted militant radicalism
Since you sourced the wiki, here's the relevant snippet:
2) that he is an admitted left wing radicalRadical History
Ayers became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).[7] He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969. As head of an SDS regional group, the "Jesse James Gang", Ayers made decisive contributions to the Weatherman orientation toward militancy.[4]
The group Ayers headed in Detroit, Michigan became one of the earliest gatherings of what became the Weatherman. Between the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group, which arose as a result of a schism in SDS.[4]
"During that time his infatuation with street fighting grew and he developed a language of confrontational militancy that became more and more extreme over the year [1969]", former Weatherman member Cathy Wilkerson wrote in 2001 (who characterizes the Weathermen's activity as "craziness"). Ayers had previously become a roommate of Terry Robbins, a fellow militant who was two years younger and "came to idolize him", Wilkerson wrote. Robbins would later be killed while making a bomb.[8]
In June 1969, the Weatherman took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected "Education Secretary".[4]
Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot.[9] The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway.[10] (The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by other Weathermen on October 6, 1970.[11][10] Built yet again, the city posted a 24-hour police guard to prevent another blast.[10]) Ayers participated in the Days of Rage riot in Chicago in October 1969, and in December was at the "War Council" meeting in Flint, Michigan.
Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant in the Weatherman group from the fall of 1969 to the spring of 1970, thought that Ayers, along with Bernardine Dohrn, were probably the two most authoritative people within the organization.[12]
Years underground
In 1970 he "went underground" with several associates after the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, in which Weatherman member Ted Gold, Ayers' close friend Terry Robbins, and Ayers' girlfriend, Oughton, were killed when a nail bomb (an anti-personnel device) they were assembling exploded. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast. Ayers was not facing criminal charges at the time, but the federal government later filed charges against him.[1]
Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and The Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, Fugitive Days. Because of a water leak caused by the Pentagon bombing, aerial bombardments during the Vietnam War had to be halted for several days. Ayers writes:
Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy - weighing close to two pounds - it caused 'tens of thousands of dollars' of damage. The operation cost under $500, and no one was killed or even hurt. In that same time, the Pentagon spent tens of millions of dollars and dropped tens of thousands of pounds of explosives on Viet Nam, killing or wounding thousands of human beings, causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.[13]
He also said, however, that the book was partly fiction.[14]
While underground, he and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married, and the two remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations. By 1976 or 1977, with federal charges against both fugitives dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct (see COINTELPRO), Ayers was ready to turn himself in to authorities, but Dohrn remained reluctant until after she gave birth to two sons, one born in 1977, the other in 1980. "He was sweet and patient, as he always is, to let me come to my senses on my own", she later said.[1] The couple turned themselves in in 1980.
Ayers and Dohrn later became legal guardians to the son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin after the boy's parents were convicted and sent to prison for their part in the Brinks Robbery of 1981.[14]
Relevant snippets:
What the recently released documents from the CAC archives reveal is that the relationship between Obama and Ayers was far more than "just a guy I know in my neighborhood."In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).
Let's put the shoe on the other foot. What if McCain worked on a foundation that promoted religious radicalization of inner city families and with someone who once orchestrated abortion clinic bombings. Would this be relevant? I certainly think so. It speaks to core beliefs which you could extrapolate to domestic policy and governance.
The Ayers relationship may not bother you, but it's hardly fallacious.
