Popehat

A Group Complaint about Law, Liberty, and Leisure

Let Me Be Clear: I Will Feed All Hungry Trolls

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I confess: I don't know what the Obama Administration's game plan is here.

It's clear that the decision to obtain, and release, a different form of birth certificate is a recent one. The decision seems to coincide with The Donald getting attention for bringing it up.

What are the possibilities?

1. Possibility: Obama has things to do and places to go, and wants to put this behind him, because it's a distraction from more important issues.

Problem: Nothing will silence the crazy people, a category that apparently includes Trump. They'll be on to some variation ("The certificate is a forgery") or diversion ("He still hasn't released his college records!") by the end of the day. It's foolish to think this will put anything to rest. Also, Obama is not doing anything that would make people like him more if they paid closer attention to it.

2. Possibility: Everything is shit, so Obama wants people distracted with media circuses, and wants people to focus on silly attacks on him rather than serious attacks on him.

Problem: This is my theory of why Obama has not released the "long-form" birth certificate before. He's been playing rope-a-dope and watching as meaningful criticisms get mixed up with nutty ones. But how does releasing the form now help this plan? He could have just kept ignoring it and allowing the dutifully shallow and fatuous media to keep it on the front page by poking Trump about it. Releasing the certificate locks him in to a particular kind of response to craziness. He could live to regret that when they demand his college applications or immunization records or something.

3. Possibility: Obama would love to run against Donald Trump in 2012, and is attempting to increase his prominence and credibility.

Problem: It's a attractive theory. (It's also a damned sad commentary on the state of the Republican party that it could work.) But it's also dangerous to the point of recklessness. Trump would be an awful candidate and an awful President. But, God help us, if the economy takes a bad bounce or there's a scandal or Obama talks more about guns and religion, this plan could backfire. In a world where people watch "Jersey Shore" voluntarily, that freakishly narcissistic bankruptcy-fetishist huckster could wind up with his finger on the red button. Invest in bunker-design futures.

What's your theory?

Last 5 posts by Ken White

Comments

  2. The idea was beginning to become more acceptable. Polls always showed a majority of Americans had some questions (i.e. they were not positive Obama was born in America – in a poll probably or less) as to whether or not Obama was born here. Trump and the relentless attacks from others were hurting enough (doesn't take much when you have negative approval ratings on everything) that they had to be addressed.

  3. pondering, they EXPECT the demand to escalate… and have a plan to take advantage of that… ie: Mom's prenatal medical records, immunizations, the cert. with the baby footprints verified by FBI… whatever it escalates too, will get a response hopefully better than…

    they asked for the BC
    we gave them the BC
    they asked for the Long form
    we gave them the long form
    they asked for mom's medical records
    we gave them mom's medical records
    they asked for immunization records
    we gave them immunization records,
    they asked for kindergarten reports
    we gave them kindergarten reports
    they asked for X
    we gave them X
    they asked for Y
    we gave them Y

    Mr. Trump, where is YOUR documentation?
    or better yet,
    "aren't you guys getting bored yet?"

    In the mean time, as the other side keeps ramping up,
    a real campaign to inform/educate people is also in full gear…

    I'm hoping people in the White House are smarter than me though…
    because… well…

    People watch Jersey Shore without being strapped down and their eyes pinned open…

  4. The theory I saw at Protein Wisdom is that is a diversion from something else that's genuinely important. They suggest some Federal Reserve press release. Maybe so; BTFOM, really.

    "Diversionary press release" makes sense to me. But since there seems to be nothing embarrassing in it (very mild surprise), it's quite likely they just thought now was a good time to get the best mileage out of it.

    If you wait too long, enough people question it that it starts hitting the political center, and you start losing votes. On the other hand, you want the questions to have taken enough root in the GOP that you can use it against them. We've hit that stage. With Trump (spit) mainstreaming the issue, it's gone far enough. Let it get any more respectable and it might hurt Obama instead of the GOP. He or his people would rather it had come to a boil closer to the election when they'd get more punch out of it, but you have to play it as it lays.

    Either way, an off-the-cuff panicky-reactive thing is in character.

    I don't believe this was meant to help Trump get the nomination (IMHO it's more likely to discredit him (at least I sure hope so)), nor do I believe they regard Trump as a threat that needs to be neutralized. They'd love to run against him. He's hopeless.

  6. After two years of spending money on lawyers to prevent its release, why today?

    Watch the other hand.

  7. "They’ll be on to some variation (“The certificate is a forgery”) or diversion (“He still hasn’t released his college records!”) by the end of the day."

    I've seen both of these already, a couple of hours ago. In fact, Trump is already pushing the college records things.

    As far as "Mr. Trump, where is YOUR documentation?" goes, well, it depends on how long it takes him to file a tax return, like he said he would do. If he does that pretty quickly, then he's preempted that attack.

  8. Some variation on possibility 2. Obama has been playing a base political game: allowing this controversy to float around out there, giving his allies in the MSM ammunition to marginalize some of his enemies. For whatever reason(Trump), he now finds the controversy is more of a problem than a benefit.

  9. Yeah, I figured he'd let Donald Chump play out the rope a little more first. Ultimately, he'd make a great counter-candidate to run against.

  10. If this was his ace up his sleeve and he played it now; I'd like to play Mr. Obama in poker because he played it too soon. Either that, or Berneke is going to announce a foreclosure notice today in testimony.

  11. btw, notice that in the past the President and his people have commonly explained the non-popularity of some of their initiatives as springing from their message not getting through. He did the same. Could it be that he thinks that now the lumpen masses will no longer be distracted and see his true glory now that the scales have fallen from their eyes.

  13. The idea that Obama partisans have, that the birth certificate faux controversy worked to their benefit by discrediting their opponents, has turned out to be a stupid move by Obama.

    It was always the kind of tactic that sounds brilliant to inside the beltway political operatives but really wasn't. It has backfired on Obama by gaining credibility as an issue rather than lowering the credibility of his opponents.

    I think someone finally convinced the White House that the polls showed that their brilliant tactic backfired on them.

  14. …for theories, here's mine:

    The birth-certificate thing was a red herring that was being used to obscure something else. My guess is that if we had a magic device that revealed the truth about everything, we'd find something like:

    1) The birth certificate shown today is perfectly proper, and he was born a plain old US citizen.

    2) At some point in his young-adult life he did something that's either legally or politically bombshell-ish now. It could be something like claiming foreign citizenship on a college application, or loan application, or a grant, or something. It could be self-identifying as a Muslim. It could be foreign travel or contacts under not-so-nice premises. It could be a collection of garden-variety lies – I dunno. Either way, in this theory, the stack of documents that make up the record of his past contains something that might be a record of his committing a crime (like fraud), or making claims significantly different than others he's made since (like the religion thing).

    3) He and his handlers over the years have done a bunch of stuff to keep the unpleasant stuff hidden. This in itself might have added to the crimes/fraud/shadiness. The stack o' papers happened to include the birth certificate, just because they wrapped up everything to be super-safe, and because HI law kept it locked-up, too.

    4) His political opponents latched onto the birth certificate thing, and his friends realized that they had the perfect red herring.

    5) So they adopted a policy of continually denying access, keeping the birthers stirred up, and keeping everyone's attention focused on the birth certificate thing, knowing that as long as focus was there, then the world was distracted from whatever bad stuff is in the rest of the file (the stuff under #2).

    6) They've now decided it's convenient to pull out the original birth certificate. That gives them a platform to say a few things simultaneously. That is: "See, our opponents are crazy and we're the sane reasonable ones."…and…"We were taking the high road all along in not playing to crazy people."…and…"If anybody makes up any other crazy stories about secret bad-stuff in BO's past (fraud, religion-stuff, etc.), then this whole sad birth certificate thing just proves that they're nuts, and that of course everything's fine with his past."

    So watch for what's in #6. The birth-certificate history will be used to hand-wave away any questions about other docs. There is a strategy to hide something serious that has nothing to do with birth certificates. Any time you see somebody following the birth certificate bunny-trail, know they're doing exactly what BO and his handlers mean for them to do.

    How'd I do on theorizin'?

  16. I like the college transcripts thing. I'd love to see the transcripts from the 16 colleges Palin went to.

  18. Coming from an International perspective [G'day to ya] I suspect that all three possibilities are correct except that neither Donald Trump nor Obama will win the next election and instead Trump's HAIR will be the new President of the United States of America.

    All hail the Hair.. the Hair is king!

    Oh and for those who doubt that this tale of Hair derring do is true.. I read it in The Punch.. an absolutely factual and awesome Australian Web Mag… ;)

  20. The birth certificate thing is just the beginning. Trump has already demanded the college transcripts. He has the press riled up, following his every word.
    I find it truly amazing that no one has been able to get Obama's transcripts from Columbia or Harvard. Certainly Gore and Bush's transcripts were published.
    For crying out loud, some of our POWs in Vietnam were interrogated about their college transcripts, that were handed over to the VC by anti-war Americans.

  22. I think this is another chapter in what I see as one of Obama's basic political strategies – he lets his opponents essentially punch themselves out.

    From the Democratic primary through the general election and his presidency, he seems to allow his opponents to say more or less whatever they want until the rhetoric starts to become rather extreme, then he does something like this that makes him seem reasonable and moderate (to the median voter).

    It seems to work pretty well. If the Trump wing of the GOP starts to get crazy about school records, Obama can have a "there they go again" moment.

  23. Skip Intro, except that releasing the birth cert this week, three years after it became a controversy, hardly makes him look reasonable and moderate. It makes him look arrogant and full of petty stubbornness.

  24. @SPQR – nonsense. He released the short form copy some time ago, which is sufficient for all legal and practical purposes. There was plenty of other evidence that he was born in Hawaii. The only people pushing this issue are morons, idiots and charlatans (e.g., Trump) who wouldn't be convinced if the Angel Gabriel presented them with the long form certificate signed by God Himself.

  25. tom, you seem to be arguing with something other than what I've said. I certainly cannot figure out what you are responding to.

  26. PLEASE tell me that nobody is taking Trump seriously about running for political office! The man has plenty of money to finance his campaign, but he's a joke! If nothing else, I'd be ashamed to have a president with such hideous hair representing my country.

  27. My theory? As President Obama is in so far over his head that he can't see the surface, and is becoming increasingly irrational. He delayed the release of the Birth Certificate not because he had a reason, but because it annoyed him to be asked. He released it not because he has a reasoned strategy, but because Trump's behavior acted like a jolt of electricity applied to a dead frog's leg and this is the spasmodic jerk it happened to produce.

    Frankly, Obama as President has always scared me (I didn't like his opponent much either, and for many of the same reasons). He struck me as largely an Ego in search of a Mantle of Office. Further, he seems to me the type to react badly to being exposed as a fool. My nightmare is that we suffer a major terrorist attack and Obama, angry and frightened that the American People will Blame Him, overreacts, leaving large sections of the middle easy glowing in the dark.

    For the record, I think McCain would be likely to do the same.

    So, for that matter, would Trump. I plan to stay the heck out of major city-centers for the next little while, and I wouldn't travel to the middle east if doing so would make me a millionaire. I think that the Islamic Squirrel Food have to be out of their collective minds to be playing chicken when we have such unstable people running the show here. Sooner or later one of these political pretty-boys we saddle ourselves with is going to snap. It will be very bad for us, but it will be infinitely WORSE for the Islamic world.

  28. Luckily, my explanation leads to a testable hypothesis. It seems like Obama's detractors aren't particularly satisfied, and his supporters never needed to be. In a couple of weeks, we'll have evidence from polling results about the effect, if any, of the release, particularly on the less attentive portions of the public.

  30. "that freakishly narcissistic bankruptcy-fetishist huckster could wind up with his finger on the red button"

    Um…would that be the one who currently has his finger there? Or the one who had it there before him? Or any plausible one of the ones who might have it there after the current guy leaves? (Whether that happens in 2013 or 2017…either way, "freakishly narcissistic huckster" describes anyone capable of getting the job, and "bankruptcy fetishist" describes anyone who'd want it.)

    The more you know about lions, the more you realize that describing them as "kings of the jungle" is really just a backhanded way of insulting the concept of monarchy. Likewise, when I say that I think Donald Trump seems _extremely_ "presidential" to me, it is most emphatically not a compliment. But it is true.