About Obama's friends, wisdom, courage, and judgement

"John McCain is a good man. He's an American hero. We honor his service to the nation. But he's made some bad decisions about the company he keeps."

Heh. This statement is from Barack Obama, of all people. He made this statement back in February, before the Rev. Jeremiah Wright dust-up.

Incidentally, I heard a sound bite awhile back in the recent past, in which Barack said Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been his mentor for [a number of] years.

More recently, I heard it being reported that Obama claims not to have said that. Sorry Barack, but I heard you say it ... in your own voice .. on tape.

I will trust my own ears, before I trust your memory (or lack thereof) ... or the spin of a typical politician.

Furthermore, a second source ( a supporter of yours, no less) claims you wrote in a letter dated February 5, 2007 that for 20 years, Rev. Wright has been a " friend, mentor and pastor.

"In that letter, the senator wrote "I constantly remember Rev. Wright as the shepherd who guided me to my commitment to Christ one Sunday morning at Trinity. I often consider, as I work in the Senate how he lives his lifea life of service to Trinity, Chicago and the nation; his activism on behalf of causes that few would champion and his dogged commitment to the first principles of love for God and fellow man. And in my personal walk, I seek daily to imitate his faith."

(Hat tip to Bob McCarty Writes)

Spin, spin, spin. Kinda' makes you dizzy.

Anyway, forgive me for I have digressed a bit. Guy Benson comments on Barack's quip on the company McCain keeps:

This magnanimous pronouncement from Barack Obama in February sounded noble at the time it was uttered. The country should reject Senator McCain not because of his biography, he argued, but because of his questionable associations—many of whom are wicked right-wingers like President Bush. With his remark, Obama unwittingly constructed a new standard of judgment that can, and should, be used against him mercilessly in the general election. An alarmingly large portion of the company Obama keeps seems to be a ragtag posse of unreformed leftists, race baiters, and blame-America-first polemicists. Although none of these individual associations will singlehandedly derail his candidacy, when considered in the aggregate, they will give many Americans reason to pause before pulling the lever for the unvetted freshman senator.

His last point is also a good one, and one that I have subscribed to all along; and that is, that all his friendships with these very questionable characters and the things he (or his wife, Michelle) have said in public in which they then had to go into spin control to minimize damage could, individually, be explained away to the satisfaction of many.

But when viewed together in totality becomes much more than I, and I suspect to many, can ignore and explain away as being a harmless mistake or misunderstanding.

Make no doubt about it. You are judged by the company you keep. This was drummed into my skull full of mush by my mother when I was a young lad growing up.

Hugh Hewitt has a good summation of Barack Obama and his friends in his recent column, "Some of My Best Friends Are Liberals. None of Them Are Terrorists."

If Barack Obama did not see the problem in befriending and accepting the support of Ayers and Dohrn --and he didn’t—and if Obama really thinks Senator Tom Coburn can fairly be compared with Ayers and Dohrn –and he did make that comparison-- then Senator Obama lacks the judgment necessary to be president.

If he understood what this rhetoric meant, then he lacked the courage to separate himself from the extremism from which it emanated.

Go read it all.

Over at Powerline, they have posted on their column, "The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 2" many audio clips of Willie Ayres and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, both former members of the terrorist group from the 1970's, the Weather Underground. They consist of both old and recent audio clips.

John Hinderaker at Poweline writes:

In The Friends of Barack Obama, Part 1 I reviewed Obama's relationship with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who helped to kick off Obama's first political campaign and with whom Obama's campaign says he has a "friendly" relationship. Ayers and Dohrn were domestic terrorists in the 1960s and 1970s, and they are as radical now as they ever were, as evidenced by their own words. Obama emerged from the far-left fringe of Chicago politics, and his relationship with Ayers and Dohrn, like his relationship with spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, raises important questions about Obama's own political beliefs.

He concludes in part 2:

Does Barack Obama really consider these views to be "respectable" and "mainstream," as his web site indicates? If so, what does that tell us about Barack Obama and the hard-left milieu from which he emerged? Likewise, what are we to make of Obama's suggestion that Jeremiah ("God damn America") Wright's church is "not particularly controversial"? A politician can't pick his relatives, but he can choose his spiritual mentor and those who host fundraisers on his behalf. Barack Obama owes the American people an explanation of his choice of friends and political associates.

Go read parts 1 and 2 and listen to the audio clips. Many questions remain in my mind.