Defining Obama
The battle to define Barack Obama is going to be brutal. Having only come onto the national scene four years ago, voters’ view of Obama are less fixed than they are of John McCain who has been around for far longer.
One potential problem for Obama is his time in Hyde Park, the liberal enclave where the University of Chicago is. Hyde Park is like Berkeley or Cambridge, Massachusetts and definitely outside what would be normally seen as the American mainstream. It is in Hyde Park that Obama became friendly with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant leftist terrorist. This connection is likely to become an increasingly big issue in the next few weeks, one Republican master of attack politics told me recently that he thinks this is the element of Obama’s biography where is most vulnerable to attack.
Today, The New York Times sheds some more light on the relationship between Obama and Ayers: “The two men were involved in efforts to reform the city’s education system. They appeared together on academic panels, including one organized by Michelle Obama to discuss the juvenile justice system, an area of mutual concern. Mr. Ayers’s book on the subject won a rave review in The Chicago Tribune by Mr. Obama, who called it “a searing and timely account.”
Obama has tried to dismiss the Ayers issue by saying he was eight when the Weather Underground bombed the Pentagon. But the McCain campaign will be able to use the fact that Obama associated with Ayers to raise questions about his judgement.
The Times piece also highlight just how problematic some of the alliance that Obama forged in Hyde park could be in a general election campaign: “Typical of Mr. Obama’s earmarks was a $100,000 grant for a youth center at a Catholic church run by the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a controversial priest who was one of the few South Side clergymen to back Mr. Obama against Mr. Rush.
Father Pfleger has long worked with South Side political leaders to reduce crime and improve the community. But he has drawn fire from some quarters for defending the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and inviting him to speak at his church. Father Pfleger, who did not return calls for comment, is one of the religious leaders whose “faith testimonials” Mr. Obama has posted on his presidential campaign Web site.”