THE 'BIRTHER' CONTROVERSY, PART I

By H. N. Burdett

The release of President Obama's birth certificate by the White House should bury the silly distraction of where he was born forever more. It will not. You can wager the farm, the cow, the pigs, the silo and the outhouse that the lunatic fringe will insist that the document the Obama administration released was an obvious forgery.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution indeed states: "No person except a natural born citizen, or citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of the President. . ."

A recent New York Times-CBS poll found that 45 percent of adult Republicans believe President Barack Obama was born in another country, up from 32 percent just one year ago in the same poll. Another 22 percent said they did not know the president's birthplace. Thus, a mere one third of adult Republicans are convinced that their Obama's country of origin is the United States.

There's more. According to the same poll, only 50 percent of independent voters -- whom Obama heavily relied upon to win a clear mandate, 53 percent of the total vote, in 2008 -- accept the fact that he is a natural-born citizen.

In the last presidential election, the Obama campaign released his birth certificate, certified by the Hawaii Department of Health and posted it online, showing he was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Disbelievers predictably questioned the authenticity of that document, but never came up with a plausible refutation of two Obama birth announcements in Honolulu newspapers.

These notices appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, on August 13 and 14, respectively, listing the future president's parents' home address as 6085 Kalanianole Highway in Honolulu.

All of this was apparently insufficient evidence to satisfy congenital skeptics. It has been used to explain real estate mogul Donald Trump's sudden surge in the early polls of prospective GOP presidential primary candidates. Trump, a genius at self-promotion whose intentions to actually run for president are widely doubted, gave fresh legs to the issue when he questioned the president's birthplace.

When Fox News's Gretchen Carlson asked Trump several weeks back whether he believed the president was born in the United States, The Donald replied, "I am really concerned. . .And I tell you. . .Hey, look, you have no doctor that remebers, you have no nurses -- this is the President of the United States -- that remembers."

Trump asserted that the death notice "was placed in the papers days after he was born." Probably because it had not dawned on his parents until nine or ten days after he was born that infant Barack was definitely presidential material.

"So," Trump continued, "he could have come into this country and they did it for social reasons. . .They did it for whatever reason. There are a lot of reasons they could have put the ad in, but he could have been born outside of this country. . Why can't he produce a birth certificate? And, by the way, there's one story that his family doesn't even know what hospital he was born in."

Trump told Fox News, "Now this guy either has a birth certificate or he doesn't. And I didn't think this was such a big deal, but I will tell you it's turning out to be a very big deal because people now are calling me all over saying, 'Please don't give up on this issue.'

"The fact is, if you're not born in the United States, you cannot be president. He's having a hard time. . .he's spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue, millions of dollars in legal fees trying to get away from this issue." Trump did not tell Fox News the source of his allegation about money Obama spent to distance himself from the non-issue. Nor did Fox News think to ask.

The prospective Republican candidate who most forthrightly declined to buy into the birther argument is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who, in a CNBC interview, flatly stated, "I believe the president was born in the United States."

Tea party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, was less certain until ABC's George Stephanopoulos recently showed her a copy of the president's birth certificate. "Well, then," she responded, "that should settle it. . .I take the president at his word."

The wiggle room created by GOP candidates who claim to take Obama "at his word," rather than accede to the documentation, allowed them to express disappointment and dismay should a vast left-wing conspiracy to elect a foreigner become uncovered at some time in the future. Before announcing that he was dropping out of the Republican primary race before it started, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was among the latter.

A spokesperson for former Pennsylvania Governor Rick Santorum, a long-shot conservative GOP presidential contender, said he believes Obama was born in Hawaii and that the birther debate is "a distraction from the real issues."

Feisty and folksy former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who was surprisingly competitive in the last Republican presidential primary, referred in a radio interview earlier this year to the president as "having grown up in Kenya," the birthplace of Obama's father. Obama grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii.

"I'm not about to question the authenticity of Barack Obama's birth certificate," commented former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, a prospective dark horse GOP primary candidate. "When you look at his policies, I do question what planet he's from. . ."

The controversy may stem from Americans' astounding lack of knowledge of geography. A poll to determine what percentage of the population know that Hawaii is a state and not a county might prove embarrassing.

Hawaii, in fact, was recognized as the 50th U.S. state on August 21, 1959, 17 days short of two years before the day Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Therein may at least partially explain the confusion.