Opinion: Too late, but Bill Ayers has Cabinet advice for pal Obama

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Catching up: With the election over, Bill Ayers has a new part-time job. You may remember him as Sen. John McCain’s favorite washed-up terrorist, the co-founder of the Weather Underground ‘60s radical group.

The Republicans tried to turn the Ayers-Obama Chicago friendship and joint education reform work into a vague extremist conspiracy, suggesting dark things about the Democratic candidate’s hidden agendas.

Well, now that the election is over and it’s safe to speak out as Barack Obama will be officially elected president of these United States today by the archaic Electoral College system in Washington, with the inauguration to come in 12 days, Ayers has written a column on Huffington Post, the world’s top-ranked blog.

His most recent effort takes Hyde Park neighbor Obama to task for his Cabinet choices, especially Arne Duncan as Education secretary.

Acknowledging that Duncan, who’s been heading Chicago public schools, was ‘the smart choice, the unity choice,’ Ayers also calls him ‘a failed urban superintendent,’ saying Duncan’s among many who ‘have little to show in terms of school improvement.’

‘Obama is not a monarch,’ Ayers states, ‘Arne Duncan is not education czar -- and we are not his subjects.’

Ayers says his own Cabinet choices, among others, would have been his wife, fellow radical Bernardine Dohrn as attorney general, Noam Chomsky as secretary of State, Paul Krugman as the Treasury chief, Naomi Klein at the Defense Department and Amy Goodman as White House press secretary.

‘So what do I know?’ he asks.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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