As for Ayers and Obama, I really don’t know what the exact nature of their relationship might be. I do know that 60s style radical activism and its associated worldview have nothing to do with Obama’s policies. Nothing. Could you imagine, say, Abbie Hoffman endorsing the Libya operation? Keep in mind that Ayers was a fair amount more radical than Hoffman.
Ayers is a fossil, a historical curiosity, whose family wealth kept him from vanishing into complete obscurity. I’ve been to one of his lectures. The atmosphere resembles a display of historic artifacts more than anything else, novel only because the artifact on display is a living breathing person rather than a suit of armor or a bunch of yellowed parchment.