Dreams from My Father
During the 2008 presidential election campaign, McCarthy wrote a number of posts on the "National Review"s Corner blog stating that he thought that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was not serious about protecting United States national security against threats from Islamic extremism and elsewhere, and that Obama had a number of troubling ties and associations with leftist radicals. McCarthy promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Ayers, co-founder of the militant radical left-wing organization Weather Underground, had authored Obama's autobiography "Dreams from My Father." McCarthy reviewed the article as "thorough, thoughtful, and alarming".