That is not, however, the reason, I hope McCain dwells on this issue. The Bill Ayers issue underscores just how out of touch John McCain is with the country he seeks to lead. To McCain's ears, Bill Ayers and the Weatherman conjure up images of dangerous radicals seeking to overthrow the American government, which is, to a large extent, what the Weatherman were. However, for many Americans, Bill Ayers and the Weatherman are something from the history books, and probably from a chapter they didn't bother to read. The Weatherman were, after all, a fringe group and largely a footnote to the history of the late 1960s and 1970s.