This is how Sarah Palin, in the 2008 presidential campaign, characterized Barack Obama’s relationship with onetime ’60s radical Bill Ayers: “Our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists.”

And not just terrorists: “Unrepentant domestic terrorists,” as she put it.

But how accurate has been the picture we’ve gotten of Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, participant in several bombings, and fugitive?

In his new book “Public Enemy,” Ayers, a now-retired University of Illinois professor, recalls the events that led up to his being labeled an “unrepentant domestic terrorist” and being used by Obama opponents to try and bring down the man who eventually won the White House.

“Public Enemy” is the sequel to his book “Fugitive Days” —

which, on its publication date, was accompanied by a New York Times headline that read, quote, “No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives.” His publication date, and the date of that headline in the New York Times, was September 11, 2001. As the twin towers were coming down, people were reading an article about Bill Ayers and his assertion that, quote, “I feel we didn’t do enough.”

And read the New York Times article on Bill Ayers’s book “Fugitive Days,” published on September 11, 2001.

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