John Gibson on why Obama’s political alliances matter

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - I meant to post this earlier today, but maybe it’s better seen after the latest from Team McCain. My friend John Gibson gave a two-minute dissertation on Rashid Khalidi last night, explaining exactly who Khalidi was when Barack Obama approved a grant of $75,000 for his organization while Obama and William Ayers served on the Woods Fund:



We’ve talked about Khalidi before, and even talked about the difference between associates and association. The latter implies a relationship only by accidental contact, while the former refers to an explicit relationship based on action. We’d be better off talking about William Ayers as a political partner of Obama’s, and Khalidi as a political ally, because that’s exactly what they were.

Both Ayers and Khalidi hosted fundraisers for Obama. They weren’t, as Gibson notes, just “some guy in my neighborhood,” but allies in Obama’s political career. And that alliance went in both directions. Khalidi got a $75,000 grant while still tied to Yasser Arafat, one of the most notorious terrorists in the world before and after the rise of Osama bin Laden. Obama ran the Chicago Annenberg Challenge for Ayers and made sure millions of dollars in grants went to Ayers’ pet projects in attempting to turn primary schools into factories for political activists.

Barack Obama told us we could trust his judgment. Where was that judgment when he allied himself with people like Ayers, Khalidi, Tony Rezko, and the Daleys and their Chicago Machine? That’s not just a series of accidental associations from random juxtaposition, but deliberate alliances from which Obama benefited in his political career. Now that they’ve become a liability, Obama wants to pretend he barely knew them and accuse people of applying guilt by association. That won’t keep people from taking a hard look at his supposedly superior judgment.