There was a kerfuffle yesterday when Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of starting the “birther” movement, which questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States and therefore might not be qualified to be president according to the Constitution. Trump answered by stating that “President Obama was born in the United States, period.” He went on to say that he ended the “birther” controversy, an apparent reference to the fact that his urging the issue led to the release of the president’s long-form birth certificate.
He also referenced the fact that it appears to have been a Hillary supporter during the 2008 Democrat primary who circulated the first questions about Obama’s birthplace. I say, “At this point, what difference does it make?”
For me, the most important question has never been, was Obama born in Kenya, where his father was from and where his African grandmother has said he was born, or did his mother return to Hawaii in time for him to be born there? The real question is: Is Barack Obama an American CULTURALLY?
I think the answer is “No”. He wasn’t raised in the United States during his formative years. His mother was an anti-American, anti- “establishment” hippie and his step-father (he never knew his father) was a Muslim from Indonesia. He did live with his white grandparents in Hawaii for a while, but he didn’t identify with their American upper-middle-class values. I recently moved to Hawaii and I can tell you that, while I love my new home, it has a very different culture from the states on the mainland. That’s not automatically bad; it’s just that Hawaii has only been a state since 1950 and doesn’t have the Judeo-Christian heritage of the mainland US, or the background of liberal (small “L”) Jeffersonian and Enlightenment democracy.
The president has often demonstrated while in office that he doesn’t value and maybe doesn’t even understand the American spirit; that self-confident, self-reliant, indomitable spirit that built the greatest, most free republic in the history of the world. He once scoffed at the idea of “American Exceptionalism”. But American IS exceptional because of our founding principles. He showed by his “You didn’t build that” speech that he doesn’t understand or appreciate the spirit of innovation and entreprenuerism that has created the highest standard of living the world has ever known, where even poor Americans are rich compared to the people of other countries. That didn’t happen accidentally, but the president doesn’t seem to appreciate what’s behind it.
While where Obama was born was important to his qualification to run for president, that horse has left the barn. It is his cultural tone-deafness to the America most of us understand and love that has made his presidency so damaging to the country.
