Spin Cycle

In response to Obama's nomination, McCain's campaign blasts out an item from its official blogger, Michael Goldfarb, reminding everyone that 40 years ago, Bill Ayers, the Chicago professor and ex-Weatherman radical who was a state Senate constituent, supporter and acquaintance of Obama, was arrested at the 1968 Democratic convention.

Why is this relevant, other than providing the GOP with another excuse to note that Obama has been supported by an ex-radical, which seems almost as important as the fact that he's using Greek pillars as the backdrop for his convention speech? Goldfarb:

"The McCain campaign would take this opportunity to remind voters that those responsible for the violence in 1968 have since been incorporated into the party they once protested, and have been revered even by the likes of Barack Obama, and this despite the failure, in the case of Ayers, to ever apologize for the violence he committed against the American people."

Translated, that seems to mean that McCain would rather argue about Vietnam than Iraq, and the GOP still thinks the 1960s culture wars are a dog whistle that can break the country red. Obama's campaign responds by noting that Obama was seven years old in 1968, and supplies a picture (at left).