Did Obama contradict his spokesman on Ayers?

Today, Barack Obama decided to try out a few new answers about his alliance with unrepetent domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and may have contradicted his own chief spokesman.

First, he told ABC anchor Charlie Gibson (D-Obama):

"Why don't we just clear it up right now I'll repeat again what I've said many times. This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois . . . And the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that . . . I've ‘palled around with a terrorist', all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points."

Nobody said he was involved in your campaign or an advisor. Those are red herrings. And, we are trying to determine how much he palled around with Ayers. That is unknown because to date Barack and Ayers haven't answered it.

On a radio interview, Obama tried a new approach:

"The gentleman in question, Bill Ayers, is a college professor, teaches education at the University of Illinois," he said. "That's how i met him -- working on a school reform project that was funded by an ambassador and very close friend of Ronald Reagan's" along with "a bunch of conservative businessmen and civic leaders."

"Ultimately, I ended up learning about the fact that he had engaged in this reprehensible act 40 years ago, but I was eight years old at the time and I assumed that he had been rehabilitated," Obama said.

Rehabilitated? This might contradict what his spokesman, David Axelrod said earlier in the week. He claimed Obama didn't know about Ayers' past when he met him. If the word "ultimately" is his dodge here, then the answer still makes no sense because there were articles in Chicago papers throughout the late 1980s stating that Ayers and his terrorist cohort wife Bernardine Dohrn were still unrepentant and not "rehabilitated" to many people, including the New York State Bar Association.

This is getting more bizarre. Why can't anyone in the media get a straight answer from Obama? Why hasn't the Obama campaign pumped out a lengthy timeline on their alliance that would make this go away?

Technorati Tags:
2008 election, Barack Obama, Illinois, John McCain, journalism, liberals, Sarah Palin, Bill Ayers