The Problem with Ayers

Thomas Frank has a characteristically forceful and well-reasoned column in today's Wall Street Journal on his friend Bill Ayers, of Weathermen fame. It is a good piece, and Frank succeeds in adding nuance to the Ayers picture, certainly the one we've been getting recently via campaign rhetoric. There's one weak passage, however, which points to the reason why Ayers still poses problems, also for Obama:

I do not defend the things Mr. Ayers did in his Weatherman days. Nor will I quibble with those who find Mr. Ayers wanting in contrition. His 2001 memoir is shot through with regret, but it lacks the abject style our culture prefers.

It's a weak passage, because the rest of the piece really ignores the issue of contrition, to the point of implying that it's pretty much irrelevant. Without expecting what Frank calls "the abject style"of contrition people today may expect from former terrorists, would it have been terribly difficult for Ayers simply to come out and say that it was plain wrong to bomb all these sites in the 1970s? And if so, why? It clearly was difficult for Ayers, to put it mildly, because in 2001 (before 9/11, not on that day) he said that he had no regrets, that the Weather Underground should have planted more bombs. I have no reason to question the multiple accounts of all the good works Ayers has undertaken recently. But especially for such an upstanding citizen, why no clear repudiation of the bombs? Frank is right, the Republicans have exploited the Ayers connection in a "vile" manner. But this lack of a clear repudiation of the bombings continues to be a problem; also, whether he likes it or not, for Obama.