Establishing eligibility

Rafique, why do you think that President Obama's old family friend, the new governor of Hawaii, reignited the controversy last week by commenting on the birth certificate matter, especially by promising to find the original birth certificate? To me, there are only two possible answers. One, the governor is incompetent and a complete political dolt who had no idea that the governor of Hawaii talking about the President's long-lost long-form original birth certificate would reignite the controversy which had, finally, nearly subsided. Or two, the governor knew exactly what he was doing, probably with the knowledge of the White House, and wanted to stoke the fires, because the accusation of birtherism against conservatives is perceived as a political boon to the President.

I agree that what's been released is legally sufficient. But all it truly proves is that there's a database maintained by the state of Hawaii that has an entry in it reflecting that the President was born on such-and-such a day in Hawaii. Do you know when that database was created? How the information was entered? What physical original records were relied upon to enter that data? What errors could have been made between a technician reading the original record and transcribing that information into the computer?

Leading up to the SOTU, the media criticized the conservative justices absenting themselves from the speech; it created the appearence of a partisan divide among the justices, complained the media. Interestingly, no one pushing the meme bothered to mention that the supposed appearence of division could just as easily be resolved by the liberal justices absence as by the conservatives' presence. Although the ability to fix the "problem" was symmetrical, the blame ladeled out by the media was distinctly lopsided.

It's much the same here, with the claim that the issue continues to fester "because the birthers continued to press the issue." The implication is that this is entirely one way, that the birthers do their thing and the whole mess will persist "regardless of what Obama does." But the thing is, Raf, there's a grain of truth in the notion that "the reason birtherism persists is somehow Obama's fault…." The President has spent inordinate amounts of time and effort trying to prevent anyone getting hold of his birth certificate—so much so that it's hard to make sense of it if you take it at face value. Something else is going on here. It seems to me that he doesn't have it, or there's something fishy on it, or his persistent refusal to simply file it can only be explained by his accruing some advantage from refusing to file it. Otherwise, why not just file it, a fortiori after his call for civility? I think the last is the most likely explanation.

To be sure, Obama can do nothing to appease the hardcore birthers. But it's mistaken to think that everyone with doubts about his eligibility must be hardcore birthers, and that inability to convince all = ability to convince none. As I said in the post, Obama could have acted in a way that would have strangled the movement at birth. And he still could; he could file his original birth certificate in any of the ongoing birther lawsuits and their inevitable successors. Doing so won't convince the hardcore birthers, but it would detach all but the truly loony from the movement. What has he done instead? He could hardly have acted in a way more likely to fan the flames, to attach more people to the fringe. As Nixon learned, when it looks like you're trying to hide something, people tend to look harder.

The birthers are nuts, but quite frankly, the President is complicit in the movement's ongoing vitality. For no good reason, and with ample opportunity, he has freely chosen to take the path most likely to incite conspiracy theorists and attach people to the movement.

being born in Hawaii, and the fact that his father was an immigrant and foreign national, and that his mother travelled abroad a lot, do nothing to change that, and yet birtherism persists, it's possible. Are you seriously telling me that because his father emigrated from Kenya, and his mother travelled a lot, and that he spent time in a foreign country as a child, that's enough to doubt his place of birth? Really? That's just bizarre.

The only way your argument makes sense, Pat, is if there is evidence that points he was born in Kenya, or Indonesia, or anywhere but Hawaii. There's none.

large has been duped, and they feel, in their own delusion, that they are speaking truth to power. "He was born in Kenya" is basically the same as "Fire can't melt steel."

The bull can only gore you if it really has, you know, actual horns. Who thinks the birthers do?