Barack Obama’s latest statement on his association with former Weather Underground is a perfect example of his slippery rhetoric: Obama: McCain Scoring ‘Cheap Political Points’.

“Why don’t we just clear it up right now,” Obama told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson in an exclusive interview for World News. “I’ll repeat again what I’ve said many times. This is a guy who engaged in some despicable acts 40 years ago when I was eight years old. By the time I met him, 10 or 15 years ago, he was a college professor of education at the University of Illinois … And the notion that somehow he has been involved in my campaign, that he is an adviser of mine, that … I’ve ‘palled around with a terrorist’, all these statements are made simply to try to score cheap political points.”

Notice: in Obama’s “clarification,” the only things he denies are accusations that no one has made. No one has claimed that William Ayers is involved in his current campaign (although Obama did get his political start at an event held in Ayers’ living room), and no one has claimed that Ayers is an current adviser to Obama.

He’s denying straw men—but not denying any of the factual claims that have been made.

And he cleared up nothing at all. This is the same tactic he used to defend and excuse his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, until Wright’s embarrassing public statements forced Obama to renounce him.

Ayers, meanwhile, has sequestered himself and is not talking to anyone. He won’t make the same mistake Wright made, and mouth off in public—although that didn’t seem to worry him much before Obama was running for president.

The media sent teams of reporters to dig through Alaskan dumpsters to find dirt on Sarah Palin, but they’re completely uninterested in finding and interviewing William Ayers.