Why Obama's past associations matter

Charles Krauthammer explains why it should matter that Obama has all these past associations with people who hate America.

Why are these associations important? Do I think Obama is as corrupt as Rezko? Or shares Wright's angry racism or Ayers' unreconstructed 1960s radicalism?

No. But that does not make these associations irrelevant. They tell us two important things about Obama.

First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with -- let alone serve on two boards with -- an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?

Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.

Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the "old politics" -- of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.

Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama's core beliefs. He doesn't share Rev. Wright's poisonous views of race nor Ayers' views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.

But now that he is running for the presidency and such past associations might embarrass him, he suddenly decides to denounce people he seemed perfectly comfortable with before. And he seems to be getting away with such opportunistic reactions.

And Krauthammer additionally points out that it is McCain's own fault that his attacks this week on Obama's connections to these guys is being pooh-poohed as desperation and dirty campaigning that is trying to distract from the financial crisis we're in. Perhaps McCain didn't want to have to raise these sorts of attacks if he didn't have to. Maybe that is why he declared Reverend Wright out of bounds. Maybe his campaign figured that it would be best to wait until a few weeks before the election when people were paying attention. After all, if the whole Jeremiah Wright controversy were happening now, instead of last Spring, the election forecasts might be totally different. Instead Obama has had time for people to absorb and forget the story. But the McCain people were running the risk that such attacks would be greeted just as they are now by a media who ignored the stories and now resents McCain and Palin bringing them up.

Senator Obama is running on his personality and ability to inspire people. He doesn't have a record of accomplishment that we could use to judge him by. So these glimpses his past associations become more indicative than they would be for a better-known candidate.

UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin performs a thought experiment to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the media ignoring all these questionable Obama connections.

The media yawns. That’s expected but becoming increasingly hard to justify unless you beleive the mission of the media requires them to ignore any information harmful to Obama. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say that McCain was the member of the John Birch Society up until 1996. Let’s say McCain worked for a group accused of diluting African America votes through vote fraud and sat on a board which doled out money to this group. But that’s not all: let’s say McCain attended a church where white separatism was preached. To top off our hypothetical, McCain started his career in the home of an abortion clinic bomber, sat on his foundation, appeared on panels with him and favorably reviewed his book.

Would any of that be a “distraction“? It seems clear that any one of those facts, let alone all of them, would be disqualifying. And if McCain in the Right Wing Nut hypothetical refused to talk about it, or lied about whether his bomber friend was “just” a guy in the neighborhood, would the media say “Oh gosh, too late in the campaign to discuss that“?

What is becoming inescapable is that Obama until his U.S. Senate run openly identified with and closely associated himself with a cast of far Left characters. Maybe he didn’t buy their philosophy or he was never around when they were spouting hatred of the United States. Maybe he grew out of them and now views them as fringe characters. We don’t know because he continues to deny that he was even part of this circle.

And the media continues to either ignore the story or just paint it as part of McCain's desperation. They could ask Obama some straightforward questions about when he became aware of Ayers' background and why he didn't react at that time instead of waiting until an election to state his condemnation. They could ask him about whether he actually trained Acorn volunteers and what he was training them to do. They can ask him about his friendship with Rashid Khalidi, reportedly a member of the PLO, and his funding of Kahlidi's organization despite Khalidi and his group's public anti-Israeli rants. They could devote half as much attention to Obama's past as they have to Sarah Palin's. They could ask Obama these direct questions, but they won't and they'll act as if anyone who raises such questions is just playing dirty politics.

And Rich Lowry points out that even Democrats don't know which Obama is the real one - the guy who ran in the primaries or the guy who switched to the center as soon as he wrapped up the nomination. Sure, politicians have been doing that since primaries that cater to activists became a fixture in our political system. But this quality may be a feature, not a bug of Obama's whole approach to life as he told us himself in his autobiography.

'PEOPLE were satisfied," Barack Obama writes in his first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," "so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves."

Such was Obama's strategy as a high-school student for dealing with white people who might be discomfited by a young black man. In the closing weeks of the campaign, Obama has hewed to this long-ago operating procedure. If "the economy, stupid" was the de facto slogan of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, "no sudden moves" could be the motto of Obama's.

After the Democratic primaries, Obama's challenge was connecting with working-class voters on their economic concerns. Could the dispassionate Obama rouse himself to do it? Could he overcome his exotic background and elitist vibe?

Then a stock market that lost almost 21 percent in value in seven days rendered the questions moot. The vertiginous drop sent every Republican candidate in the country reeling, and relieved Obama of the burden of connecting. Now, he only has to seem reassuring and nonthreatening. That, he knows how to do.

The masterly execution of a political straddle is among Obama's many talents. His second book, "The Audacity of Hope," is devoted to the craft. As Time magazine writer Joe Klein noted at the time, he "counted no fewer than 50 instances of excruciatingly judicious on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-handedness." So while the McCain campaign wants to revive the Obama of "Dreams" - an angry young man, lost until he finds a home in left-wing Chicago - Obama is presenting himself as the cautious candidate of the inaptly named "Audacity."

So was he going along with the radicals he associated with in his earlier years just to advance his own political career or is that the true Obama? Will he just be "going along" with a Pelosi and Reid Congress and giving them whatever liberal nostrums they come up with. We don't know and it shouldn't be regarded as illegitimate to ask these questions now before we turn the whole government over to him.