Batchelor: False Witness (Updated)

John Batchelor wrote early this morning on his blog:

Alarming if true:

News arrives from best McCain camp source that Mr. McCain aims to confront Barack Obama during the final debate Wednesday 15 with regard Mr. Obama’s long association and collegiality with the toxic and villainous Billy Ayers.

This is alarming if true not because it’s wrong of Mr. McCain — who believes that Mr. Obama is unqualified to take the oath of office because of Ayers — but rather because it will establish a tragic theme in Mr. Obama’s campaign that will carry into his likely first term as the 44th president.

The theme is false witness.

Mr. Obama has not been candid about his friendship and close working relationship with Mr. Ayers at least since 1994. Nor has Mr. Obama been convincing in his denials. Instead of confronting the facts and explaining himself and his choices, Mr. Obama has veered between deception, distraction and deviousness.

The facts will out, and, as the American voters learn in the first Obama Administration, if that is to be, that Mr. Obama has misstated deliberately and repeatedly the facts about him and Mr. Ayers and Ms. Bernardine Dohrn in order to avoid a political shadow, the public anger, contempt and finally alienation will deepen. It is a tragedy in slow motion.

At the same time the Ayers story spills out, gradually and completely once the usual story-chasing sources work again past election day, the unrelated but equally cynical game playing by the convicted corrupter Tony Rezko will spill out of the ongoing corruption investigations in the Cook County machine, and will weaken the new president’s credibility daily and expose him to criminal suspicions. I can not predict how the Rezko scandal will turn; it is too laden with crooks and liars. However with Ayers and Obama, it is easier to see the road ahead.

There is no and was no criminal behavior with regard Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers. There was just opportunism and cynicism: two adults making calculated decisions to promote each other over many years. Did Mr. Obama know that Bill Ayers was unacceptable as a political ally outside of the amoral hothouse of Hyde Park? Yes. Mr. Obama is hollow not because of his present truths but because of his past false witness.

Update: An editorial on Obama and ACORN in today’s Wall Street Journal adds:

The Obama campaign is now distancing itself from Acorn, claiming Mr. Obama never organized with it and has nothing to do with illegal voter registration. Yet it’s disingenuous to channel cash into an operation with a history of fraud and then claim you’re shocked to discover reports of fraud. As with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes. But now that he’s on the brink of the Presidency, he wants to disavow his ties.

The Justice Department needs to treat these fraud reports as something larger than a few local violators. The question is whether Acorn is systematically subverting U.S. election law — on the taxpayer’s dime.