Written by Bob Siegel and originally published by The Washington Times Communities, 4-27-11. Used by permission.
When somebody falls for a trap, who’s to blame, the trapper, or the sucker who took the bait? Neither Donald Trump nor President Obama have much to brag about today regarding the birth certificate nonsense, but both are offering cocky speeches anyway, almost as if they feel like taking a bow.
After more than two years of questions and doubts giving life to the term “birther,” and energy to potential presidential candidate Donald Trump, the Obama administration finally put forth a copy of our president’s birth certificate. Undoubtedly, this still will not be enough for certain individuals, and theories about forgery will abound. Naturally, anything is possible, but for the moment, let us operate under the more likely assumption that Obama’s authentic birth certificate did, in fact, finally rear its little head.
For many of us conservatives, this has been a non-issue. When we have a president who apologizes for America in Middle East countries, hires a self-professed Communist as a “czar,” and triples our national debt by seeding more and more control to the federal government, there may just be a few better arguments for seeking a new head of state.
Ironically, Trump himself agrees that there are more important issues. Speaking at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, he said, “Today, I am very proud of myself because I have accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish. I was just informed…that our president has finally released a birth certificate. … I hope it’s true so that we can get on to more important matters…Now we can talk about oil, we can talk about gasoline prices, we can talk about China ripping off this country.” (CBS/AP April 27, 2011)
Actually, Mr. Trump, you could have been talking about those things already. And, in fact, you did talk about them. But you also used up a lot of oxygen over the birth certificate, far more than we might expect from one who seems relieved that this distraction has now been removed.
Meanwhile, Trump isn’t the only one “grateful” to get on with the nation’s needs. President Obama, while commenting from the office of the Press Secretary, shortly after his birth certificate was released, said, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve.”
Fair enough, Mr. President. So why didn’t you end this matter two years ago, if it’s such silly nonsense? True, he released a “Certification of Live Birth”, also known as a “short form birth certificate.” It lists less information than the longer “Certificate of Live Birth,” which Hawaii no longer hands out, according to Hawaiian Department of Health.
Spokeswoman Janice Okubo explained that Hawaii discontinued releasing the longer “Certificate” in 2001 after birth records were “put into electronic files for consistent reporting” (Born Identity, June 6, 2009). Some argued that this is not the same as an official birth certificate.
If doubt remained, what would it have hurt to release the primary document right from the start? Maybe Hawaii has its protocol, but to believe that any state in our union would not cooperate with the President of the United States more thoroughly on a matter of such importance, is a stretch of the imagination that rivals leprechauns, unicorns, and Santa himself.
Is it possible that the Obama administration secretly enjoyed all the “birther” discussion? Were they hoping to drag this out, believing in the pit of their stomachs that the longer they waited, the more foolish conservatives would look after authentic proof was finally offered, especially with so much of the liberal media in their corner to fan the flame?
Nobody can prove anything here, but if this was the plan, it worked brilliantly. True, thinking people will soon move on, but our mainstream media seems to be betting the farm on simple-minded voters. They allow no grace. After all, the Constitution really does insist that any person seeking the office of president be a natural-born U.S. citizen, and Obama wasn’t displaying a whole lot of effort to end the issue, so even those of us who aren’t birthers should cut a little slack in their direction.
Unfortunately, slack seems to be in short supply at MSNBC. Even before the major turn of events, Donald Trump’s quest was being spun faster than Rumpelstiltskin turned straw into gold.
Observe Tavis Smiley’s “fair” commentary one day before Obama finally produced the birth certificate: “I said over a year ago that this was going to be, this presidential race, Lawrence, was going to be the ugliest, the nastiest, the most divisive, and the most racist in the history of this republic. . . . I saw it coming because it’s pretty clear, given how the Tea Party has acted, given that Donald Trump is now playing to the worst in the Tea Party, that this would be possible.”” (The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, April, 26,2011, MSNBC)
Mr. Smiley, when you insinuate that doubts or disagreements about our president are born from nothing but racism, are not your own words “ugly,” “nasty,” and “divisive”?
Does this condemnation of conservatives equally apply to Democratic supporters of the Hillary campaign, who also asked Obama to display a birth certificate? How about the Republicans who defended black conservatives such as Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice from the fiery darts of the left? And have you forgotten the many African-Americans who participate in Tea Parties? What about the Black Tea Party that organized in Houston?
Are they racist as well?
Granted, those who appeal only to one-dimensional thinking do not ask such questions, but let us not forget that many who supported Obama in 2008, dubbed him “the candidate, who spoke with nuance, not a simpleton such as George Bush.” Therefore, questions with a little depth are in order.
And then there’s Ed Schultz, responding to Trump’s other inquiry for Obama’s college transcripts: “This is what the Republican Party stands for, racism. I think Donald Trump is a racist.” (The Ed Show, April, 26,2011, MSNBC)
Yes, that has to be it, Mr. Schultz. Racism must be the motive. It’s simply impossible that people might object to our president for any reason other than race. It couldn’t have anything to do with a man who campaigned on being transparent and has shown himself to be anything but. Neither could a fear of socialism, a weak national defense, or a failing economy be related to distaste for Obama.
No sir! Must be racism! End of conversation!
In any event, for better or worse, the birth certificate has finally surfaced. If Obama did set a trap for his Republican adversaries by deliberate, calculated delay, let us minimize the damage as much as possible by calling out those who would give lectures about “toning down the rhetoric” while slinging their own mud. Not to leave conservatives out, they have a challenge of their own: Move on!
Far easier objections can be raised: Our legal president has been a horrible president!
Bob Siegel is a weekend radio talk show host on KCBQ and columnist. Details of his show can be found at www.bobsiegel.net. Comments to posts are discussed by Bob over the air where anyone is free to call in and respond/debate. Call in toll free number: 1-888-344-1170.
Comments 1
Duh…of COURSE Obama laid a trap. Conservative commentators did us no favors – afraid of their own shadows, they refused for 2 years to say something clear.
“The Birthers are akin to those that believe that wearing tin foil on your head stops radiation or that Floridation is a communist plot. They really need to seek professional psychiatric help.”
One of the failings in the modern conservative movement is its inability to precisely know what to do with the more paranoid elements of the American right (the left’s mirror flaw is the coniption fits it gets into over questions of race by radicalized professional protestors). We never knew what to do with the John Birch society and we still can’t with their modern-day ilk.
And we continue to wiff. Shouldn’t the leadership of Congress have had “choice words” for Donald about now his RIDICULOUS demand for Obama to release his Occidental transcript? And then, like a passing ship, a teachable moment lost…..
PS. The president probably didn’t “make the request 2 years ago” because THEN these same commentators would be taking him to task for asking for extraordinary treatment from the state of Hawaii. You can’t be willing to criticize him for acting like an out of touch king….unless it is convenient for you to criticize him for NOT acting like an out of touch king.