by Paul Kengor
Another way to consider the question of a political leader's formative influences is to imagine how the mainstream media would react were Barack Obama a conservative Republican who had these sorts of long-running associations with the far Right. What would Dana Milbank think of, say, a John McCain mentor who carried water for Hitler, as Davis had for Stalin? No liberal journalist would laugh at that question.
Enter More Liberals
Dana Milbank was far from alone. The more that conservatives like Cliff Kincaid sounded the alarm on Frank Marshall Davis, the harder it became for liberal journalists to ignore the matter. But even when compelled to address Obama's connections to Davis, they went to great lengths to downplay the issue.
A case in point was the Associated Press, which in 2008 ran two articles on Barack Obama's life in Hawaii, including one specifically on Frank Marshall Davis. Both of these articles were nothing short of astounding in their ability to ignore the obvious. The slight was so bad that a frustrated Cliff Kincaid denounced the articles as “blatant fraud and deception,” especially in light of the fact that the AP had contacted Kincaid and Romerstein, and had received reports, documentation, and follow-up phone calls.39
One of the AP stories, published on August 2, 2008, did confirm the tight relationship between Obama and Davis.40 It called Davis “a constant figure in his [Obama's] early life,” and an “important influence,” who Obama “looked to,” like a “father,” like a “mentor,” for “advice on living.”
From there, however, the article was scandalous in its omissions. Of all the articles that Davis filed for the Honolulu Record in 1949—which form a lengthy chapter in this book—the AP managed to quote only one: “I refuse to settle for anything less than all the rights which are due me under the constitution.” The AP placed this quote strictly in the context of Davis's “advocating civil rights amid segregation.”
This quotation is hardly representative of where David stood at the time. To call it cherry-picking is insufficient. To rely on this line was shamelessly misleading to AP readers. In AP's account, the Frank Marshall Davis of 1949 was a civilrights defender and crusader for the U.S. Constitution, suffering the jackboot of segregation. There was no sign of the Stalinist, of the unyielding trasher of Harry Truman, of the bomb thrower targeting the Democratic president's alleged attempts at a neocolonial state, a fascist-imperialist state, a racist state, a third world war.
The word “communism”—which had been the central force in Davis's life, the very reason for his column and arrival in Hawaii in the first place—was never mentioned in the AP article. Worse than that, the article said dismissively that the charges of Davis's “allegedly anti-American views” were soundly rejected by “those who knew Davis and his work,” who maintained that “his activism was aimed squarely at social injustice.”
Harry Truman and the Democrats of the 1940s would beg to differ. That piece of reportage by the AP was tremendously ill-informed.
The article noted that Davis worked for “a wire service for black newspapers” but not did mention the Chicago Star or the Honolulu Record. It listed his close African-American contemporaries, except for Paul Robeson. And while the article made no mention of Joe Stalin, it did mention Joe McCarthy. The article quoted John Edgar Tidwell, the University of Kansas professor who has confirmed Davis's CPUSA affiliation. The AP, however, quoted Tidwell calling Davis a victim of a “McCarthy-era strategy of smear tactics and condemnation by association.”
The AP story also quoted Tidwell waxing poetic of Davis as “a beacon, a light shedding understanding and enlightenment on the problems that denied people, regardless of race, national origin or economic status.” Frank Marshall Davis was, according to the Associated Press, not a slash-and-burn agitator for the Communist movement who unrelentingly attacked an honorable American (Democratic) president and opposed everything from the Marshall Plan to the Truman Doctrine to America's attempt to save West Germany; he was, instead, a uniter, a healer, a champion of fairness and the underprivileged.
The Honolulu Community Media Council took the same tack. This local civic group issued a press release exposing the disreputable work not of Communists past but, rather, of today's anti-Communists, specifically Cliff Kincaid, Herb Romerstein, and Bill Steigerwald, a Pittsburgh reporter who had dared to report on the inappropriateness of Dana Milbank's behavior at the May 22, 2008, press conference. It was the anti-Communists, not Davis, who were guilty of “shoddy journalism and smear tactics,” said the council, which, incidentally, found “no substance” to the claims that Davis was “a lifelong communist and mentor to Mr. Obama.” No, said the council, Davis had moved to Hawaii in 1948 “in part to seek a climate more favorable to his mixed-race marriage.”41
Later that August, the Washington Post ran an in-depth profile of Obama's life in Hawaii. The lengthy article, which ran to an incredible ten thousand words, was the work of Pulitzer Prize–journalist David Maraniss, who did superb reporting on a young Bill Clinton a decade earlier. Amazingly, this extraordinarily comprehensive article, the most in-depth piece on Obama in Hawaii by any major newspaper, neglected to mention Frank Marshall Davis even one time.42 That was something that Obama himself could not avoid.
When called on this shocking omission by Kincaid's watchdog group, Maraniss, who, characteristically, was courteous enough to respond, explained, “My reporting conclusion was the role of ‘Frank’ had been hyped out of all proportion, both by Obama himself in his book and some others later.”43
As Kincaid noted, Maraniss did not explain how he arrived at that conclusion, and he failed to let readers decide on the importance of a figure whom Obama himself and other sources had identified as a key influence. Perhaps, like Conrad Black refusing to believe a credible account of FDR's admiration for Stalin, David Maraniss simply did not want to take the word even of the subject himself when that word hurts the subject's image.
One day after Maraniss's piece appeared in the Post, Newsweek’s Jon Meacham heralded Frank Marshall Davis as a “strong voice for racial justice,” whose commendable “writings on civil-rights and labor issues” had wrought the unholy wrath of the anti-Communists. “His political activism,” Meacham wrote of Davis, “especially his writings on civil-rights and labor issues, prompted a McCarthyite denunciation by the House Un-American Activities Committee.”44
Examples continue to roll in from leading journalists. To cite just one, New Yorker editor David Remnick, author of excellent works on Soviet Russia, including the acclaimed Lenin's Tomb, took little account of Davis in his major book on Obama released in April 2010. The book, The Bridge, runs more than six hundred pages long but mentions Davis only a handful of times. Remnick dismisses the “attacks” of the “right-wing blogosphere” as “loud and unrelenting,” and even scoffs at claims that Davis was a “card-carrying Communist.”45
Perhaps Remnick should have consulted Davis's FBI files, which are available to any interested reader or researcher.
An Anointing from Ayers
Unlike Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers was very much alive during the 2008 presidential campaign. His influence on Barack Obama was not confined to Obama's youth; he was a friend and colleague of an adult Obama. Because of that, and because he was unrepentant about his past in the Weather Underground—a past recent enough and shocking enough that many Americans were aware of him—Ayers became a bigger issue in the 2008 campaign. But once again, liberals rallied to defend Obama over his radical connections.
After getting his doctorate from Columbia Teachers College, Ayers had moved to Chicago, where he not only got a job in academia but also became active in politics. In 1995 he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn—still self-proclaimed small “c” communists—hosted a political christening of sorts for the individual hand-chosen by radical Illinois state senator Alice Palmer as her successor.
That very small gathering at the Ayers-Dohrn home included only several people. Among them was Dr. Quentin Young, who had testified before the House Co
mmittee on Internal Security in 1968.46 Young, who once refused to say whether he was a member of the Communist Party, was now, in the post–Cold War era, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a group that on May Day 1992 honored Young with its highest prize: its annual Debs Award—named for Eugene Debs, the four-time Socialist Party presidential candidate.47 The doctor was a staunch proponent of “single-payer” (government-run) health care.48
Alice Palmer, the state senator, was there as well. In the 1980s Palmer had served on the executive board of the FBI-identified Communist front group the
U.S. Peace Council, an affiliate of the Soviet stooge World Peace Council. Also on that board was future Democratic congresswoman Barbara Lee. (See pages 456–57.) Palmer had begun serving the Illinois State Senate in 1991. Now, like Barbara Lee, she had her eyes on a run for the U.S. Congress. She chose this function at the Ayers-Dohrn home to anoint her preferred successor—an aspiring politician in his mid-thirties named Barack Obama.49 Yes, Obama was there, with Palmer, with Quentin Young, to get the political blessing of Ayers and Dohrn.
Is it an exaggeration to make a lot of this moment? Did Alice Palmer make this gesture only at the Ayers-Dohrn gathering? Or did she repeat it elsewhere?
The difficulty in answering those questions is compounded by the fact that the mainstream press has not pushed Obama for any details, even when the subject was broached by the one source that liberal Obama supporters would trust: the New York Times. The Times flagged the meeting in a page-one story on Obama and Ayers on October 4, 2008.50
That story was somewhat noncommittal on the incident in question, although not silent. The Times confirmed the “gathering” at the Ayers-Dohrn home, and quoted a local rabbi named A. J. Wolf, an Obama supporter, as calling it a “coffee” and “one of several such neighborhood events as Mr. Obama prepared to run.”51 The rabbi was the only source the Times quoted. Everyone else was tight-lipped, including Ayers and Dohrn, who, said the Times reporter, refused “multiple requests” to be interviewed.52
That said, the article conveyed the import of the meeting. The Times conceded that it was there, at the Ayers-Dohrn home, where “State Senator Alice J. Palmer, who planned to run for Congress, introduced Mr. Obama to a few Democratic friends as her chosen successor.”53
A few weeks after receiving that political blessing, on September 19, 1995, this emergent political dynamo announced his candidacy for Palmer's seat to a packed room of two hundred supporters at the Ramada Inn Lakeshore in Hyde Park.54 Barack Obama was setting sail toward a truly vast political horizon.
Bill and Barack
There was, undoubtedly, a symbolism to the political christening that occurred at the Ayers-Dohrn home that day in 1995. There, in that living room, Bill Ayers, lifelong revolutionary and educational “change agent” from the University of Michigan and Columbia, would, along with the infamous Bernardine Dohrn, lay hands upon the king of all “change agents,” Barack Obama.
Ayers and Obama had already known each other prior to that kickoff party. Precisely when they first met remains a mystery. The New York Times, in its October 2008 story on Ayers and Obama, said that the two men had met in 1995 at a “meeting about school reform.” But the Times reported this based on the claim of an Obama “campaign spokesman.” Many conservatives expressed doubts about that official story. Some have presented evidence that Obama and Ayers may have worked together as early as 1988, on a project involving Chicago schools.55 And Ayers and Obama could have met even earlier. Specifically, it seems feasible to consider that they met in New York City around 1983.
Obama attended Columbia from 1981 to 1983, a transfer student from Occidental College. Ayers got his master's degree from Bank Street College, just blocks from Columbia, in 1984, which suggests he began graduate studies in 1982.56 We know that Ayers was living in the city, working as a teacher at a nursery school in Manhattan, in 1982.57 Also, Ayers received his doctorate from Columbia in 1987, and Obama may have lived in New York City and around Columbia well after he graduated in 1983. The overlap between Ayers and Obama is there. Of course, New York is a huge city, but there is a possibility that the two were introduced, particularly if they had mutual friends and ran in similar circles.
Unfortunately, the media's unwillingness to ask these basic biographical questions of the man holding the most influential position on the planet has created unnecessary confusion. Exacerbating the situation is Columbia's refusal to release Obama's college records—an unusual reticence for this self-anointed bastion of open inquiry. Worse, Obama has been extremely reticent about this period in his life, which is odd for a man who had already written two memoirs by his mid-forties.58
Either way, Obama and Bill Ayers would both leave New York for Chicago, where they would interact and work together on many occasions and in varied capacities. They jointly served as board members at the Woods Fund in Chicago; they worked on “school reform” through the Chicago Annenberg Challenge; they served on a juvenile-justice panel (organized by Michelle Obama); they appeared together as speakers or panel participants at Chicago events; they had many mutual associations, including with troubling figures like Rashid Khalidi, the Columbia University Middle East studies professor known for his controversial views; they acknowledged one another in books and reviews and even endorsed the other's books; and they had a relationship as neighbors (three blocks apart). These are just some of the numerous reported associations. The relationship was both professional and personal. Some have speculated that Barack Obama met his wife, Michelle, at the Sidley & Austin law firm where Bernardine Dohrn worked.59
Of course, this came after Bill Ayers stopped detonating bombs, as Obama was quick to note as a presidential candidate in 2008—although Ayers had told the September 11, 2001, New York Times that he still loved the “eloquence” and “poetry” of explosives. Obama also frequently noted that he “was only eight years old” when Ayers, Dohrn, and the Weathermen were killing police. That, too, is correct. Yet it is also correct that Obama was forty years old when Ayers told the Times that he had no regrets about bombing the Pentagon.
By then, Ayers and Obama had known each other for at least six years, including the political blessing that transpired at the Ayers-Dohrn home. Obama was a respected Chicago professional, serving in prominent positions in the community, working with Ayers, all while Ayers remained unrepentant about his past. The Ayers-Obama relationship went up to and continued through Ayers's comments to the New York Times in 2001.
Consider: The longest period that Obama and Ayers formally worked together—on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge—appears to have run from 1995 through 2000, with Obama the chair. As the New York Times reported, archives from the project show that the two attended at least six meetings together, with Ayers providing briefings on educational issues.60 As chair, Obama could have easily rejected Ayers's contributions and even participation. He most certainly did not.
Not only did Obama not distance himself from the onetime bomber, but he even personally accepted money from Ayers. According to the New York Times, in 2001, the same period when Ayers openly lamented that he had not done enough damage to the Pentagon, Ayers donated $200 to Obama's reelection campaign for the Illinois State Senate, which Obama happily accepted.61 To my knowledge, no one in the mainstream media has asked Obama to repudiate that donation.
From 1999 to 2002, again stretching over the September 2001 period, the pair also served together on the board of the Woods Fund, a tight board of only seven members. Officials from the fund refuse to release minutes from these meetings, but confirmed to the Times that the board met quarterly during this four-year period, which would equate to sixteen meetings.62
Obama and Ayers also spoke at the same conferences. For example, in November 1997 the University of Chicago Chronicle reported that Ayers “is one of four panelists who will speak on juvenile justice at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20.” One of the other panelists, the Chronicle noted, would be “Sen. Barack Obama, Senior
Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system.” The story also quoted a key university administrator responsible for “bringing issues like this to campus”: the associate dean of student services and director of the University Community Service Center—a woman named Michelle Obama.63
Seven months after Ayers's September 2001 comments, both Barack Obama and Bill Ayers spoke on another panel together. This time they appeared together at a conference on “intellectuals” held April 19–20, 2002, at the Chicago Illini Union at Ayers's school, the University of Illinois at Chicago. (See page 461.) The speakers included Obama, Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Columbia University's Patricia Williams, and Richard Rorty. (The late Rorty was a pragmatist, a Dewey disciple, and an angry atheist who wrote that the goal of college educators must be to help “bigoted, homophobic religious” students “escape the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents,” so those students will “leave college with views more like our own.”)64