“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.” Rebecca Harding Davis
Assuming that Harding Davis’s “mean streets” represent the dark and foreboding tangle of uncharted roads, the twists and turns that represent the political life of Barack Obama, then the figurative “man” who travels down that road must, of necessity, be that ever-growing body of unrelenting patriots known collectively as “birthers,” recently joined by billionaire developer Donald Trump, who question Obama’s eligibility to serve as President of the United States.
And if Barack Obama’s “budget” speech of April 13… charitably characterized by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer as being disgraceful, shallow, hyper-partisan, intellectually dishonest, and remarkably demagoguegic… is any measure of the mean-spiritedness of Barack Obama, then it’s time that Republican leaders at all levels got on board with Donald Trump to insure that Barack Obama’s days in the Oval Office are numbered. If we are to have any chance at all of saving our nation for future generations, then it is inevitable that the Obama presidency must be exposed as the cruel hoax that it is… and the sooner the better.
During the 1970s, a “futurist” named Graham Molitor, then a General Mills executive, perfected a model for predicting the evolution of issues, from first mention to final resolution. And while his theory was applied primarily to issues of a technical/scientific nature, forming a standard parabolic curve when plotted over time, I believe that there is a similar inevitability to all issues, including issues such as the Obama eligibility issue.
On January 3, 2008, Obama won the Iowa caucuses, propelling him from being the darling of the progressive “tin hat brigade” into prominence as a serious contender. It was on that date that the first serious questions were raised about his eligibility. From that point on it is possible to plot the significance of events, in chronological order, that describe the evolution of the issue:
Notice by legal experts, filing of initial complaint (Philip J. Berg)
- Emergence of deviant types… critics, “birthers”
- Emergence of victims (Ambassador Alan Keyes, LTC Terry Lakin, Maj. Stefan Cook)
- Doubters ridiculed by leftist sympathizers (Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann)
- Disclosure of government-sponsored research (Congressional Research Service)
- Exposure in prominent blogs, Internet websites
- Court challenges, lawsuits multiply
- Polling data, public opinion research, voter attitudes
- Crusaders spawn disciples, public interest crusaders, zealots
- Articles in gossip columns and supermarket tabloids
- Congress and state legislatures take note
- Challenges by high-profile pundits, commentators (Chris Matthews, Donald Trump)
- Books, non-fiction best sellers (Dr. Jerome Corsi)
- Heated debate on popular radio and TV shows (The View, Today Show, Sean Hannity)
- Congress and state legislatures take action. Legislation introduced
- Ads challenging eligibility appear in major market newspapers (Washington Times)
- High profile opponents demand proof of eligibility (Donald Trump)
- Books challenging eligibility achieve bestseller status
- Major newspapers, radio and TV networks take note
- One or more states enact legislation restricting access to 2012 ballot
Prior to the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, few serious observers gave Obama any chance of winning the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. One of his primary opponents, Senator Joe Biden, said candidly, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Yes, his was a “storybook” case… a literal fairytale that has become a nightmare.
We knew that he was a transplant from Hawaii to Illinois, that his mother was American… originally from Kansas… and that his father was a Luo tribesman from Kenya. We knew that he’d lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather from age six to age ten, and that he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles after graduating from a private prep school in Honolulu. He also told us that he had attended Columbia University from 1981 until 1983, earning an undergraduate degree in political science… although no one in the Columbia political science program during those years remembers ever seeing him or meeting him.
After graduation he worked as a “community organizer” in Chicago before attending Harvard Law School. While a student at Harvard, and while serving as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, he received an advance to write a memoir. In that memoir he goes into considerable detail about his first summer in New York, the summer of 1981. However, we learned much later that that section of the book was largely fiction. The truth is, he spent most of that summer visiting his mother and step-sister in Indonesia and three weeks traveling with friends in Pakistan.
Who paid for his private school education in Honolulu, his undergraduate schooling at Occidental and Columbia, his Harvard Law School education, and who financed his 1981 around-the-world trip… just weeks after he arrived in New York without the price of a fleabag hotel room in his pocket… remains a complete mystery. After graduating from Harvard, he returned to Chicago to practice law and, in 1996, he ran for and won a seat in the Illinois State Senate. While serving in the State Senate, from January 1997 through 2004, he voted “present” on 129 occasions… apparently on those occasions when a “yea” or a “nay” vote might have been damaging to his long term political ambitions.
We know that in 2004 he ran for a seat in the United States Senate. And after serving for a matter of weeks in the Senate he announced his intention to seek his party’s nomination for President of the United States. Never has a man of so little accomplishment, with so little experience in any field of human activity, sought the leadership of a major world power… let alone leadership of the world’s only remaining superpower. The rest is history.
Chronologically, the first major development in the Obama eligibility issue was a lawsuit filed against him on August 21, 2008 by a former Pennsylvania deputy attorney general, Philip J. Berg, a lifelong Democrat. Berg’s lawsuit was followed soon thereafter by lawsuits in 18 states and the District of Columbia. In the months that followed, suits were filed by potential victims… those who would be damaged either by his candidacy or by his election… including suits by Ambassador Alan Keyes, presidential candidate of the Constitution Party; Army Major Stefan Cook, who challenged Obama’s authority to order his deployment to Afghanistan; and Army LTC Terry Lakin, now serving a prison sentence because he refused to obey orders until Obama provided proof of eligibility to serve as Commander in Chief.
As constituents put more and more pressure on members of Congress, the Congressional Research Service issued a memorandum prepared by researcher Jack Maskell, behind which members of Congress quickly took refuge. The memorandum stated that the Constitution made no specific provision for the vetting of presidential and vice presidential candidates. However, the issue was receiving enough attention on the internet that leftist pundits such as Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow felt obliged to ridicule the so-called “birthers” who demanded to see Obama’s long form birth certificate.
By mid 2010, the story began appearing on the covers of major tabloids at supermarket checkout counters and legislation was introduced in Congress requiring future candidates for president and vice president to provide documentary proof of eligibility. In the early weeks of 2011, bills were introduced in the legislatures of at least twelve states, requiring candidates for president and vice president to provide proof of “natural born” citizenship as a condition of having their names appear on future General Election ballots.
The issue received major impetus in March 2011 when billionaire real estate developer and potential Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump outraged the ladies of The View by insisting that the American people deserve to see Obama’s long form birth certificate. Within days Trump produced his birth certificate and challenged Obama to do the same.
At this writing, the Obama eligibility issue is nearing its inflection point, what mathematicians describe as the point at which the locus of the parabolic curve changes from arcing upward to arcing downward. Because of the publicity generated by Trump’s courageous challenge, it can be safely predicted that the Obama eligibility issue will reach critical mass at some point during the late summer of 2011 when Dr. Jerome Corsi’s book, “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is Not Eligible to Be President,” arrives at the top of the NYT non-fiction bestseller list.
At that point the end of the “mean streets” of Obama will be in sight, the much-abused “birthers” will be vindicated, congressional Republicans can take serious steps toward resolving our debt and deficit problems, and the Democratic Party, the party that nominated and elected Obama, knowing from the outset that he was ineligible to serve, will suffer the consequences.