The president-elect’s incoming chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, dismissively told the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley that while John McCain “‘tried to make this [the campaign] about small things like [education guru] Bill Ayers, Barack made it about [big things such as] health care.’”

Sorry, but Obama’s professional, political, personal, and longterm dealings with an unrepentant terrorist — and one whose radical views on education he shared and funded — was and remains a very big thing. This and other associations on the president-elect’s part should at the least have given even Rahm pause when considering how Obama will face up to our enemies and how he will deal with our education woes.

Soon enough the president-elect’s glossed-over radical associations, and similar suspect “little things” about his past, will return to haunt him — and Rahm. His chief of staff will not always be able to wave them away so flippantly.