Bill Ayers: I Wrote "Dreams From My Father"

President Barack Obama's bestseller, "Dreams From My Father" is a huge part of his legend, and was a key part in allowing him to advance his political career. TIME magazine enthused in print that it "may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician."

There have always been rumors, however, that he never wrote it at all. And several literary analysts have pointed out startling similarities in the style,phrasing and language used in "Dreams From My Father" with books by the president's good friend, unrepentant Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers. The similarities between "Dreams From My Father" and Ayer's book "Prairie Fire" are especially striking.

And by the way, "Prairie Fire", dedicated to Sirhan Sirhan goes unmentioned on Ayers' own website, an interesting factoid in itself.

We do know that Barack Obama was somehow appointed President of the Harvard Law Review, the only one in history ever to get that slot without having ever written a single article for it. Also a matter of record is that the future president had huge problems with getting the manuscript written and chapters turned in by deadline, to the point where his original publisher, Simon and Schuster, cancelled the book deal.He was subsequently signed by Random House, but once again there were similar problems, to the point Random House was actually considering cancelling the deal and asking for the advance to be returned. Then suddenly, in a burst of creativity or something else, the book was completed and every one was happy.

Bill Ayers has claimed that it was actually he that wrote "Dreams From My Father"...twice:

In October 2009, Ayers told an interviewer at Reagan National Airport in Washington that he wrote "Dreams From My Father." Asked if he meant he "heavily edited" the book for his friend, Ayers insisted, "I wrote it."

He added that Michelle Obama asked him to help Obama, who had blown deadlines and was struggling with delivering a manuscript.

Then in March 2011, Ayers revealed his role in the book after giving a speech at Montclair State University in New Jersey. During a question-and-answer session, a member of the audience remarked how well Obama's first memoir was written.

Ayers agreed and offered that Obama's second autobiography — "Audacity of Hope" — paled in comparison. He said "the second one was more of a political hack book, but the first book's quite good."

Then Ayers volunteered, "Did you know I wrote it?"

"What's that?" the startled questioner asked.

"I wrote 'Dreams From My Father,'" Ayers asserted.

Sarcasm? Perhaps. But it's interesting that notoriously thin-skinned President Obama has never challenged this in the least. And Ayers is now openly using his claim of authorship to sell his new book, "Public Enemy".

His publisher Beacon House has actually written a blurb on the book's Amazon.com entry saying Ayers "finally 'confesses' that he did write 'Dreams From My Father.'"

And at various stops on his book tour, ads are appearing openly referring to him as the author of 'Dreams From My Father', something that definitely wouldn't happen unless it was coordinated in advance with Ayers and his publisher because of the possible legal ramifications. It's almost as if he's daring President Obama to do something about it.

The relationship between Ayers, who comes from a wealthy Chicago family and the Obamas goes back well before "Dreams From My Father" was published in 1995. President Obama and Bill Ayers both were employed by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and served on the board of the Woods Fund, which specialized in grants for radical Left wing causes. And it was in Bill Ayers and his wife convicted terrorist Bernadine Dohrn's Hyde Park home in Chicago where Barack Obama launched his political career, at a fundraiser they threw for him.

Is Ayers telling the truth when he says that Michelle Obama implored him, an already published author to help a struggling Barack Obama with "Dreams From My Father"? I think we have to file this one under plausible, but not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Nevertheless, given their relationship, Ayers' skill as a writer, the striking similarities in language, style and phrasing, Ayer's unchallenged claims of authorship and President Obama's long history of serial prevarication and untruths, this is very much in the realm of possibility.

And even if it is true, does it matter? After all, Governor Sarah Palin openly admitted to using a co-writer on her first book, and celebrities of all kinds have done the same for years.

I'd say it does...because President Obama has always claimed sole authorship of his book, because if it's true it's one more example of President Obama's lying about his background, because it is one more instance where the dinosaur media failed to vet him, and because it is one more indication that his relationship with Ayers was a lot closer than the president's statement that Ayers was 'Just some guy I knew in the neighborhood'.

And of course, because it's another illustration of how the American people were gamed and conned in 2008.