Obama vs the birthers

By David Solway
© 2010

We recall the famous riddle of the sphinx from the classical literature: What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening? Oedipus provided the answer: man. The riddle can be rephrased to conform with current circumstance: Which creature in the morning travels on the various legs of a journey, at mid-day legs it out in terra incognita and in the evening emerges into prominence on a policy without legs, aka "hope and change"? It doesn't require an Oedipus to provide the solution.

Aside from his sheer incompetence, the social, fiscal and political policies that, as Charles Krauthammer has argued, have yielded an America in precipitous retreat, there is something rather insidious about Obama as well, something vague and worrisome, which cannot simply be wished away. That he is an accomplished liar there is no doubt, as Jerome Corsi has amply demonstrated in "Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," and as Obama's congressional and subsequent record makes no less clear. Obama is also something of a plagiarist, as his Super Tuesday speech should make evident. "Yes, we can" is the motto of the United Farm Workers, dating from 1972 – Si se puede. "We are the change we seek" comes from a speech by Jane Fonda, "The New Feminism," given in 2004. "We are the ones we've been waiting for" is the concluding line of a poem by June Jordan, "Poem for South African Women," excerpted from her collection "Passion: New Poems 1977-80." His best phrases and most ringing proclamations are not his, and they are delivered without attribution. Even his mantra "change we can believe in" is reminiscent of his Kenyan relative Raila Odinga's slogan – "Kenya's agent for change" – for whom Obama campaigned during Odinga's 2006 election bid.

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"This is the strangest presidency I have seen in my lifetime," writes acclaimed historian Victor Davis Hanson, and proceeds to itemize a long list of discrepancies, contradictions, fables, libels and subterfuges in Obama's actions and declarations. "Where does this disregard for the truth arise?" he asks, and replies that Obama knows he can get away with his dishonesty, since the "media is obsequious and sanctions almost anything he does" and he is also perfectly aware that "his base was always interested in power, not principle." Nonetheless, at some point, the president's "untruths, hypocrisies and contradictions will, in their totality," ultimately prove his undoing, as the lividity of his agenda becomes unmistakable. One can only hope that the master of mendacity will trip up one day and that Hanson is not only a historian but an oracle.

The real question, has to do with how deep the lies have burrowed into the very tissue of his biography. The confusion that surrounds the details of his place of birth evades satisfactory clarification. (The flap over his mother's residency requirement also clouds the issue.) Is he a legitimate president or not? Though many of us do not want to touch this explosive question, it would be both timorous and disingenuous not to acknowledge that it is "out there" and apparently gaining traction. Most of the online sites and print venues have declined to publish anything that deals with this inflammable subject. Why such reluctance? One editor explained that they are wary of falling into a trap in which, having printed an article disputing the president's bona fides, the documents attesting to his authenticity are suddenly sprung on them, leaving them with egg on their faces and strengthening the president's authority. This is an unlikely hypothesis. Obama would surely have decisively countered these allegations when they surfaced during his nomination run-off with Hillary Clinton. Another editor agrees that there is something definitely "fishy" about the president; nevertheless, the matter is off limits.

We may consider this affair to be nothing but a risible canard, a conspiracy theory foisted upon us by credulous and paranoid "birthers" that should not be taken seriously, and this may conceivably be the case. But let us not pretend that it is not an issue that somehow refuses to go away.

Some people consider the "birther" controversy an unfortunate distraction from more important matters, as, for example, Obama's propensity for making inexplicable decisions or the mass of other significant documents kept under seal. Focusing on the affair, they say, is counter-productive. Many feel it is nothing but a slanderous and partisan campaign that does not merit the attention of mature observers. Still others are simply afraid of being mercilessly ridiculed and written off as wingnuts, or intuit it is demonstrably unsafe to meddle in such concerns. And many, too, simply cannot believe that a hoax of this enormity can have been successfully perpetrated in a free society and consequently cannot but regard the birther claims as the product of deranged minds – but then, the worldwide AGW scam might have educated us to such possibilities. The malign influence of a complicit media is extremely powerful, seeping into the consciousness of even the most hardened skeptics and leaving a residue of unwarranted belief in the untenable or problematic. Finally, some who suspect the birthers may be right feel it would do more harm to America to expose an imposture of this magnitude than to let it run its course until the next election when Obama might be voted out of office. "Might be," regrettably, is not "will be."

Without unduly prejudicing the issue, I am only remarking upon a datum, not a fact, which journalistic integrity requires us to take notice of. For as with almost everything involving Obama, there are troubling signs here, too. One could make a dismissive game of it as in the old campaign joke and say the president is obviously a transplanted Irishman, originally O'Bama, and let it go at that. But this settles nothing.

For it is not merely Obama's putative illegitimacy but the fact of Obama himself with all the harm he is doing both domestically and internationally that may conceivably lead to major dislocations, far worse than the disasters of Jimmy Carter's administration or the blowback naiveté of Woodrow Wilson's. Indeed, what we see developing is a cataclysm from which America may not be able to recover. That is why the legitimacy question needs to be pursued until it is settled one way or another. The stirring finale of Ezra Pound's celebrated Pisan Canto LXXXI serves as a cautionary tale: "Here error is all in the not done,/all in the diffidence that faltered." What is not helpful to the nation as a whole is precisely Obama's continued occupancy of the White House. This is the reason so burning an issue should not be suffered to just gutter out. For in the electoral framework, it seems the only way to dismiss Obama from office before his destructive term is up is via impeachment, and the only way this can conceivably happen is for the courts to accede to disclosure requests, assuming that Obama does indeed have something to hide.

And it sure looks like he does. Obama is the only president who has suppressed vital personal information; every other has made full disclosure. When the press raised a fuss about John McCain's birth particulars – since he was born in the Panama Canal Zone – he immediately released all his actual documents, thousands of pages worth, including those showing that he was a natural-born American citizen, as per the United States Code [8 U.S.C. 1403 (a)]. Obama did not follow suit, and the media let him off the hook. The document released online is not an authentic birth certificate. It is the "short form" affidavit, a Certificate of Live Birth (COLB) with standard information left out, such as the actual name of the birth hospital and the name of the attending physician. In "Dreams from My Father," Obama mentions having found his birth certificate, which, as it turns out, was then conveniently lost in a small house fire. Nor would the two announcements in Honolulu newspapers confirming his birth constitute proof of American citizenship or be accepted as such in a court of law, for obvious reasons.

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There is more. Even if we refrain from coming to unequivocal conclusions on this file, it seems almost certain that his records must contain damaging information that could bring his presidency into serious, if not terminal disrepute. How else would one explain the fact that his university transcripts and his records as an Illinois state legislator, like his "long-form" birth certificate, are inaccessible and that Obama has hired a team of lawyers to make sure they remain that way? This behavior is completely unprecedented in POTUS annals, and he should be duly challenged on it. Requiring Obama to open his dossier is not a sign of conspiratorial suspicions; it is quite simply a civil responsibility and the most reasonable of demands since this is precisely what all U.S. presidents should do and have done. Shirking this responsibility, however, is largely a symptom of either moral cowardice or false propriety, irrespective of how it may be embroidered for public consumption or self-protection. Of course, there are some who demur out of a sense of fundamental decency which, we might note, goes unreciprocated by the president and his team.

So the obvious questions are: Why has Obama not consented to this request? Why does he not dispel suspicion by making his papers available to the public if he has nothing to fear? What makes him noli me tangere? What is he reluctant to shed light upon? Why is the debate about his origins not stopped dead in its tracks by the publication of valid, irrefutable documentation? And why are those who ask these logical and totally justifiable questions dismissed as madmen and conspiracy theorists? The conspiracy, it would seem, travels the other way.

And the farce goes on. Why has the state of Hawaii passed a law allowing it to block requests for the release of Obama's birth certificate? Health Director Chiyome Fukino claims to have seen the authentic document – a valid copy not lost in a fire? – and obviously expects us to take her word for it without a single shred of evidence. Further – and this is crucial – why should Ms. Chiyome feel obliged to attest to having vetted the famous certificate if, as many of the president's supporters have claimed, including White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the question has long been settled and the certificate is already in the public domain? There would be absolutely no need for such an affirmation if the matter were indeed settled. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. But since we are dealing with a COLB, what would prevent Hawaii from modifying or passing a law permitting it to issue a facsimile of the original birth certificate online or to the newspapers, thus putting the matter to rest once and for all? And why does Obama not file a petition and avail himself of this option? If everything is halal, it would surely be to his advantage to do so. His legitimacy would then be corroborated beyond the slightest ambiguity and fade from public consciousness, for as things stand the controversy is detrimental to the confidence a people must repose in its leader.

It is as if all the interested parties have taken a vow of omerta. In addition, one gets the distinct impression that the president's supporters wouldn't care if he were a holographic emanation, so long as he remains in power. (Obama has been described as the "teflon president," since no criticism or accusation sticks to him; but the "holographic president" might be just as accurate a designation, as he is a kind of ectoplasmic projection constructed by his own figments and velleities in tandem with a media machine working overtime.) Others are perfectly content to declare allegiance to a closed book, just as Obama is perfectly happy to keep the book closed. None of this makes any sense unless there is some form of deception at work. What else are we to reasonably assume? Can there be some other interpretation? If there is, let's hear it. Otherwise it is difficult to avoid the conjecture that we have been royally conned and are now confronted with a tainted presidency.

The evidence seems to point increasingly in this direction. Moreover, an integral part of the evidence calling the president's legitimacy into question is precisely the lack of available evidence, that is, what appears to be the willful and deliberate suppression of veridical data that would immediately put the issue to bed. It is very much like pleading the Fifth Amendment. One is exempt from incriminating oneself, which inevitably suggests that unpleasant facts lurk beneath the surface. The evasion is further accentuated when obstacles are purposely put in the path of revelation. This is so obvious as to provoke wonderment that such strategies of resistance and obscurantism are rarely queried by journalists, editors and public intellectuals. For where there's smoke, there's a gun, so to speak.

In an article entitled "Make Mine a Jeep" for Car and Driver (June 2010), the Cato Institute's P.J. O'Rourke eschews the exotics with weird names we see on the road and opts for the homey. "Give me a Jeep," he pleads. "It's not perfect, but neither are we. … The Jeep is straight, square, forthright." It is, when all is said and done, "an American device … a fitting instrument to transport the free people of a free nation. …" But, he concludes, "if we go off our meds, we might end up in a Prius."

In electing Barack Obama, who is neither straight, square nor forthright, Americans have plainly gone off their meds and bought a presidential Prius. Unless they decide to reJeep their priorities, where they will end up does not bear much considering.