Despite the media's love fest with Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, much has been made of his association with Bill Ayres, founder of the old Weather Underground.
It's been tossed around in debates, and aired on (mostly conservative) talk shows. The most frequent version of the story says Obama basically started his political career in Ayres' living room, with his full backing. Folks who still have memory cells left from the 60s may remember the Weather Underground as a ragtag band of revolutionists who made halfway decent explosives and targeted several public buildings like the Pentagon. Although Obama says he was eight years old when Ayres was at his peak, this should leave a bad taste in the mouth of any voter.
Strangely enough, very little has been made of Republican candidate John McCain's personal skeleton in the closet, but it may be instructive of a fundamental difference between the two candidates.
If Ayres, as it seems, was Obama's polital godfather, McCain's own godfather was a rather nefarious character in his own right. When the Navy man was taking his first stabs at politics, he befriended one Danforth "Duke" Tully, publisher of the Arizona Republic.
Tully was, by all accounts, an outstanding newspaperman and a real character. He was known as a war hero, and had the medals to prove it. A fighter pilot. He sensed a kindred spirit in returning POW and Navy pilot MccCain. The two hung around together. Their families became close. Tully stood as godfather to at least one of McCain's children. And Tully, publisher of the most powerful newspaper in the state, threw his support behind McCain.
There was a major problem, though. Tully was not a war hero. Never served. He made up his whole background and milked it for all it was worth. When he was exposed, he was forced to leave the Arizona Republic. Disgraced, Tully drifted among several tiny newspapers in Arizona and California. McCain, though, landed on his feet.
I did not know Tully. I've never met him. But you can say I do know him, indirectly. With the Republic, his chief lieutenant was a salty old newsman named Verne Peyser, who followed Tully to such outposts as Cottonwood, Arizona, and Ojai, California.
The newspaper business can be a lonely one, but many news crews do stick together through the years. I can tell you about that. I have worked on three newspapers in two states with my old managing editor Greg Bucci. He's still writing in Arizona, and we've sent a few emails back and forth. I still keep in touch with Charlie Hand, although it's been 20 years since we've worked in the same newsroom. He's since tried to get me back on his staff, and I've conspired to do the same thing with him. If I should turn up in his newsroom ready to write one day, I'm sure he wouldn't mind.
Anyway, in 1990 Greg recommended me for a job in his newsroom, with the old Booster in Bullhead City, Arizona. It's now called the Mohave Valley Daily News. Our managing editor was this leathery old guy who chain-smoked those long brown More cigarettes, spoke with enough profanity to make sailors and truckers cover their ears, and brought out some of my best work ever. I loved Verne Peyser.
Verne was also a walking treasury of newsroom lore. He had a coffee cup he'd filched from Air Force One. He'd fielded calls from Lyndon Johnson when the president had his late-night bouts of telephonitis. He'd consumed cheap whiskey with retired President Harry Truman, and took the Nebraska bar exam as part of a news story (and passed it, despite a seventh-grade education). And he had many stories about his man, Duke Tully.
But Verne's stories about Tully didn't have much of a McCain hook. Understand, this was the early 1990s. Then, McCain was still a fairly minor player in the Senate. He was replacing a legend in Barry Goldwater. Outside of Arizona, McCain was unknown except for his standing as a former prisoner of war. He hadn't developed his power base yet, or his reputation as a maverick. Besides, McCain probably wasn't the only political star Tully had created or backed.
As far as the McCain connection to Tully, I had to go no further than McCain's own autobiography, "Worth The Fighting For," published a few years ago. In it McCain devotes several pages to his relationship with the publisher, including how he bought into Tully's tales and his own initial outrage at Tully's lies -- a real war hero doesn't take kindly to folks who claim that status without earning it. But in his autobiography, you can tell McCain held compassion for Tully -- it seemed the publisher's father was a decorated military man, Duke felt a lot of pressure to follow in his footsteps, and never could get around the fact he couldn't meet Dad's standards, real or imagined.
So the McCain-Tully connection is old news. It has been covered. Straight from the horse's mouth, in fact.
So that's a fundamental difference between the two candidates. McCain wrote freely of his asociation with a disgraced publisher who helped start him in politics. He's been straight-ahead about it. Obama, in discussing Ayres, is still trying to baffle you with ... well, you know.
Both candidates have skeletons stashed in their political closets. The real difference is in how they handled these skeletons. And you can bet that difference will also show in how McCain and Obama will handle day-to-day business in the White House.
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