If McCain wants to bring it up tonight

This is what I'd tell him:

Yes, thanks. I know who he is. I know now what he did, when I was eight. I've condemned it, and I'll condemn it again. I have no idea what his current attitude to those activities is. You and your people tell me he's "unrepentant," I believe that's the term you use.

Since you obviously seem to know one whole hell of a lot more about him than I do, I'll take your word for it.

But it's not my job to expect or demand repentance from anybody, and I certainly never talked to him about it. I sat on a couple of boards in Chicago a number of years ago. We were all working at trying to improve education there.

Chicago is a big city, with a lot of challenges. There were nearly four dozen people on those boards. The main thing I knew about any of them was that we were all working toward some common goals.

Maybe they did some bad things in their past as well. That's their business, and that was not among my concerns during our association. I'm not an FBI agent, or a cop.

And maybe you've gone and done background checks on all those people too. I don't know. And I wouldn't really care all that much, to be perfectly honest. I guess I've just got more important things to worry about than you do and I'd rather talk about those things.

And I think the American people would rather talk about and hear about those things as well. As a matter of fact I'm sure they would.

But if you want to talk about Bill Ayers, if that's the sort of thing you find important, then be my guest. I'm just not interested, thanks.