Is Barack Obama a victim? Or is he a birther?
Politicians are often beset by rumors; it goes with the job description. LBJ plotted the assassination of John Kennedy. Bill Clinton fathered a black child. Bush 43 regularly snorted cocaine. So it should be no surprise that the rumors about Barack Obama should be so prevalent. No one tracks their frequency, but a politician who doesn't garner the attention of rumormongers is not much of a politician.
Yet, there seems to be something specially challenging, resonant, and profound about the allegation, now heard in barber shops and on Cable News, that Barack Obama was not born within the United States. Obama is a natural born man, but many doubt whether he is a natural born citizen. And this is the rub. Was Barack Obama born in exotic Oahu or in even more exotic Nairobi?
Perhaps it is true that because of Barack Hussein Obama's otherness, his difference from white-bread America, the personalities of his parents, and his several years in Muslim Indonesia as a child, the idea of Barack the Manchurian Candidate has taken root in some quarters of America's paranoid imagination. Perhaps the rumors that are spread about Obama 44 are more exotic than those spread about Presidents 1-43 combined. Certainly the Obama campaign recognized the explosive dangers of the alternative knowledge propounded by his opponents. The concerns were so severe that they built a website entitled "Fight the Smears," a charming attempt to attack the bizarre (Barack was an organizer for ACORN) and the ambiguous (Barack has a weak record on crime).
However, the big enchilada of rumors has been the claim that Obama was not born in the United States, and thus his candidacy was illegal. Were this to be true, the election requires a do-over: McCain and Hilary mano-a-mano. As folksinger Phil Ochs once remarked about how Richard Nixon's lies undercut his legitimacy, "Now that he's president, he's not even president."
As a connoisseur of rumors, I am no birther. The evidence has long been clear and overwhelming. I accept the claims of Hawaiian officials that the president was born in the Aloha State. They deserve to be proud And today as we finally are shown the "long-form" birth certificate with the name of the hospital (Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital) and the signature of the attending physician, the evidence is stronger still.
Still, there is something curious about the whole business, a charge originally made by Hilary Clinton supporters during the primary season of 2008. Were I to be challenged as to my birth, I would have immediately rushed to my safe deposit box, pull out the official birth certificate from the State of New York, and rattle off the name of my doctor, the hospital, and all the other information on the long-form of the certificate. I would not have waited three years for the rumor to gain steam. Rumors need to be addressed immediately.
So why did President Obama wait so long before opening his safe? To be sure even touching the long-form will not persuade the most enthusiastic conspiracy theorist; paranoia runs deep. Even now there has been some questioning of the "Certificate of Live Birth." Some rumors are too good to be false. Recent polls suggest that as many as a quarter of all Americans are uncertain than the President was born on Hawaiian soil.
So then how do we explain this choice of the Obama White House to delay meeting the rumor head-on, being satisfied with head fakes, winks, and nods. The only reasonable conclusion is that the Obama team cultivated the rumor and is delighted that it is perpetuated. Now by releasing the Certificate of Live Birth, they are providing Donald Trump with additional attention for it was his insistence that provided this document and keeping the story alive. The explanation is simple. All of those voters who believe that it is plausible that Barack Obama was not born in the United States are lost to him forever. Yet, the catnip of the birther argument has a sulfurous odor for those independents on which his re-election depends. Obama wants his opponents to continue to discuss his birth. For a president who wishes to assert that his opponents are extremists, perhaps just a little bit batty, and perhaps a slightly racist, this charge pays dividends. It must not die. As a result, the president has become, in effect, the Birther-in-Chief. Obama would far rather have his opposition emphasize this nutty claim than to target gas prices, unemployment, the rising debt, or the multiplying wars in the Mideast.
With each Republican who must address this canard - and now they all must do so - Obama wins by political jujitsu. He's the adult; they are the crazies. Keeping the Birther controversy alive is Barack Obama's dream and his salvation, and releasing the birth certificate as the debate was threatening to die down is a stroke of political genius.
Obama was born in Honolulu. How could he not be. He's sweet, tart, tough and prickly. He's a darling little pineapple.