Never Mind Who--WHERE Was Your Mama?

Rumors are flying again: is Barack Obama a natural born American citizen or isn’t he? If he isn’t that makes him ineligible under the Constitution to be president. His Kenyan grandmother says he was born in Kenya. Hawaii supposedly refuses to affirm that he was born there.
I cannot remember this issue being raised since George Romney ran for the Republican nomination in 1968. It was rumored that his parents had been members of an heretical Mormon sect that took refuge in Mexico about the time of his birth.
Before this became a serious question, Romney’s campaign flamed out in late winter. It hasn’t been an issue since then, and I can’t recall if it ever was before then. It’s certainly never been brought up AFTER a candidate was elected!
The Constitution is unambiguously clear on the point. The American electorate was unambiguously clear on its majority vote for candidate Obama. There is an unusual emotional quotient to his election—the young, the blacks and even a lot of other minorities feel they have a personal stake in Obama.
Many members of these groups, especially the young, have never before been politically active. A lot of them may not be politically sophisticated. Were they to feel that a two hundred year old legal technicality had deprived them of their victory, they are not likely to take it calmly.
In the highly unlikely case that Obama is not legally a natural born American, that’s going to raise Constitutional questions no one ever thought of. Not when Nixon resigned. Not when George W. Bush won the presidency in court. Obama’s ticket won—does that mean that Joe Biden automatically gets sworn in on January 20? (Under the Twelfth Amendment.)
Does the whole ticket get tossed out? (Remember the Supreme Court still has a Republican majority.) Or does the Electoral College get its chance to do something new and original—as is their actual right under the Constitution? Or does it get tossed into the House of Representatives?
Oh, the possibilities! It dazzles the mind. We won’t have seen such engrossing politics since the Watergate Hearings—or the McCarthy Army Hearings. It may also shake the living daylights out of the American political process. Think how happy Wall Street and the banking community will be with new waves of uncertainly washing over them.
Throw in a few likely mass demonstrations, not impossibly a riot or two, and you have a really unstable situation. After the immediate reaction calms down, will most of the new voters go back into their shells never to believe—or vote—again?
Internationally, the leaders and populations who are so excited about a new beginning under Obama, are simply not going to believe it. (The Chinese couldn’t believe it when we squeezed Nixon out for what they saw as a very minor infraction. Almost no one abroad could.)
Many will be sure the real reason was racial. Others will think there was some kind of hidden conspiracy to protect the status quo nationally or internationally. They’ll believe “somebody” powerful just didn’t want Obama’s notion of change.
Today things are merely at the point of a rumor with all the staying power of snow in Puerto Rico. But there is always the outside chance that someone, somewhere will come up with enough evidence to convince enough of the right (or wrong) people to bring things to a head,
The people who are alleging this are serious. Presidents have survived nutty rumors throughout our history. But that, maybe, two percent chance that Obama’s place of birth could be cast into real doubt is one to give everyone a moment’s pause.