“We never committed terror,” he assures us, noting that (a) the Weathermen didn’t kill anyone, which is true if you exclude the occasional cop or two (a point Chris Cuomo doesn’t raise) and (b) even though what they did “was definitely over lots of lines,” it doesn’t really qualify as terror because the war simply had to be stopped and they were acting to that end. As he says in “Fugitive Days”:

Terrorists terrorize, they kill innocent civilians, while we organized and agitated. Terrorists destroy randomly, while our actions bore, we hoped, the precise stamp of a cut diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate.

Their intentions were good, you see. Which, in fairness to Ayers, is indeed the crux of why so many leftists are angrier at Palin for bringing him up on the trail than at Obama for gladhanding him in the first place. The Underground meant well, quite unlike those nasty jihadis and abortion-clinic bombers, whom Cuomo, to his credit, does bring up. The quote, incidentally, comes from Timothy Noah’s 2001 review of the book, which is worth reading for many reasons but foremost for his reclamation of a few Ayers blasts from the past that somehow didn’t end up in the final manuscript. Like this one, circa 1970: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at.” Thirty-one years later, he famously told the Times, “I don’t regret setting bombs.” The man is, if nothing else, consistent. Bear those two lines in mind as you watch him wheeze about how “dishonest” it is for people to try to demonize him and his old comrades.

It’s in two parts; click the image to watch the first clip, then select the second from the bottom of the ABC interface when you’re done. The question about being a “friend” of our next president comes up front. Contain your surprise as he tries to downplay that too, insisting that he was merely describing how bloggers — and of course Mayor Daley — have characterized the relationship.