Bringing a long spoon

David S. Bernstein invites his readers to Write Obama's Ayers Response, that is, to help Barack Obama prepare for the moment in tomorrow night’s debate when John McCain accuses him of dishonestly hiding his connection with Bill Ayers.

Here’s my bad advice, timed to the best of my imitation at ninety seconds (I can’t remember what their time blocks are in this round):

Idiotic and fictional Obama counterpart who takes advice from random bloggers: You are upset that I’ve somehow hid my connection with William Ayers. I haven’t. I was on a couple of non-profit boards with him. Mr. Ayers and I have worked together on educational issues. We have both taught at Universities in Chicago, where we live in the same neighborhood. I used to see him now and then on his bike, John, before I got so busy with this campaign. Is that honest enough for you? Can we move on, now, to perhaps discuss people who really do influence my thinking, and maybe people who influence yours?

But I do want to say one more thing about William Ayers. I do. Before we move on. I want to say that I condemn, utterly condemn, his acts of violence. I have said that to his face, John, and I say it to yours, now. But twenty years later, long after he turned himself in for the crimes he committed when I was a child, now and in the nineties he is doing a lot of work on educating children in the inner cities. And I do not regret working with him on those issues. I am willing to work with him, despite—I’ll say it again—despite condemning the acts of violence.

You see, I wanted to get something done for our children and for our schools. And I was willing to sit down with the people who were working on that issue, including Mr. Ayers, who was widely recognized as a leader in that field in my city. I was willing to do that. I was willing to sit down with him because I recognize that sometimes you have to work with people, even with people you don’t like, even with people who have done things you don’t like, because the work is more important. You’ve given me a lot of grief, John, about your interpretation of my willingness to work with foreign leaders that I don’t like. It’s not naïveté. I know that sometimes bad things happen. But I do think it’s naïve to believe you can get the important things done without ever sitting down at a table with someone who has done something bad.

But if you want to know what I really think, if you want to know who I listen to, if you want to know my actual policies, well, I hope, now we’ve got that out of the way, we can talk about that.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.