HiddenMysteries: McCain finishes just behind Ayers

by David Sarasohn

If Bill Ayers was supposed to blow this debate and campaign wide open, Wednesday evening saw another failed Weathermen explosion.

For days now, we've heard from the John McCain campaign, and various right-wing cheerleaders, and people at Republican rallies who seem to have missed their last anger management meeting, that McCain needed to attack Barack Obama about Ayers to change all those discouraging poll results.

Wednesday evening, in the final debate, Bill Ayers -- the 1960s Weatherman bomber turned into Chicago education professor and Obama acquaintance -- finally came up.

In terms of changing the campaign, he might as well have stayed in Chicago.

If that was John McCain's last stand, Custer needs to move over.

To McCain's insistence that we need to know more about Obama's ties with Ayers -- as if deeper investigation would disclose that Obama and Ayers were buying plastic explosives together over the Internet -- Obama responded coolly, "Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Senator McCain's campaign over the last few weeks."

As McCain pressed it again, Obama shrugged, "The fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign says more about your campaign than it does about me."

What it said about McCain's campaign is that it had become a) desperate and b) warped enough to believe that while Americans saw their economy collapsing around their ears, a presidential campaign was going to turn on Bill Ayers.

The evening went on like that, with Obama skipping over each McCain attack to insist that that wasn't what the campaign was about, and to leap to broader issues. "I don't mind being attacked for the next four weeks," he said at one point, "but the American people can't afford four more years of failed economic policies."

And with Obama's lead widening, and all the trends running in his direction, Bill Ayers was the only new thing McCain had to offer -- except a truly weird obsession with Joe the Plumber.

Possibly a relative of Sarah Palin's pal Joe Sixpack.

Everything else McCain had to say -- everybody's taxes should be cut, earmarks were the real economic problem, that he was famous for taking on his Republican colleagues -- had been heard before, and it wasn't clear why McCain thought it would do any better tonight.

Instant CBS and CNN polls suggested that it didn't, that Obama had gotten yet another boost, even if McCain had some more good moments than in past debates.

There was perhaps one illumination, when McCain insisted firmly that he would pick Supreme Court justices based on qualifications rather than on any litmus test -- but that anyone who supported Roe vs. Wade was clearly not qualified.

Then again, by the end of the evening, it seemed even more unlikely that McCain would ever be picking any.

And also, that Bill Ayers probably shouldn't apply.

You don't need a Weatherman to know which way this wind blows.

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McCain finishes just behind Ayers

Wednesday, October 15 2008 @ 11:26 PM CDT