President Obama today released his "long form" birth certificate, finally pricking, it is to be hoped, the bubble of fevered speculation that he wasn't born on U.S. soil.
Now that everyone has had a chance to inspect it, one wonders why it took him so long to release it. No, his mother didn't name a man other than Barack Hussein Obama, a Kenyan student, to be his father, nor was his father's religion ("Muslim" might have been a political negative) requested on the long form.
Those who adhere to the Machiavellian Obama might believe he kept the issue alive to distract his opponents, but it just may be he was trying to preserve a modicum of privacy by answering but not over-answering the "birther" question with the "short form", lest the personal questions would never stop. Witness Donald Trump, who claims credit for today's disclosure, who is now asking for the release of college transcripts. Mr. Trump looks like an elitist bully--if he thinks Barack Obama is some kind of "affirmative action" President and isn't smart enough to hold the office he ought to just say so. What one did in college has little or no relevance to one's fitness for high office 30 years later. I don't often side with the President, but here I agree---let's move on.
P.S. Speaking of methodologies learned in college, I couldn't resist comparing and contrasting Mr. Obama's birth certificate with my own long form copy. I'm a bit older than he is, so I have "Territory of Hawaii" instead of "State of Hawaii" in the upper left corner. The rest of the boxes are pretty much the same: the substitution of "island" on the state form for "county" on the territorial form is a minor modification. The only curiosity--a small one--on Barack's certificate is the mother's street address [6085 Kalanianaole Highway], which on the current numbering system places the Obama family close to Hawaii Kai, which had just started development. I'm not sure that the old Obama address even exists after 50 years of home- and highway building. © 2011 Stephen Yuen
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