Back in 2008, the Politico noted — with apparent skepticism — the genuineness of the sprint towards the center by Presidential candidate Obama:

Obama’s relationship with Ayers is an especially vivid milepost on his rise, in record time, from a local official who unabashedly reflected a very liberal district to the leader of national movement based largely on the claim that he can transcend ideological divides.

In one sense, Obama’s journey toward the cultural and political center is not unusual among national politicians. But its velocity is…The relationship with Ayers gives context to his recent past in Hyde Park politics. It’s milieu in which a former violent radical was a stalwart of the local scene, not especially controversial.

It’s also a scene whose liberal ideological features — while taken for granted by the Chicago press corps that knows Obama best — provides a jarring contrast with Obama’s current, anti-ideological stance.

We read a piece that said the discussion of Obama-Ayers had matters backwards: the interesting question wasn’t why Obama got mixed up with Ayers, it was why Ayers bothered to get mixed up with Obama. If you ask the question that way, its meaning becomes quite different.

For example, what price did Ayers charge Obama for editing/ghosting “Dreams”, as Jack Cashill has asserted and Ayers has admitted? And don’t this scene and this scene seem a little different to you, given all that is transpiring in America today? (HT: Larwyn)

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