A Question for the Obama Birth Certificate Conspiracy Theorists

This week, a conservative activist spent thousands of dollars on full page ads in the Chicago Tribune questioning whether Barack Obama is actually a natural born U.S. citizen (and therefore eligible to be president). Numerous law suits have been filed across the country by various wingnuts and wingnut groups challenging Obama's eligibility to hold office.

Despite repeated efforts by media organizations and the state of Hawaii to debunk this claim, it just won't die. There is a core group of very dedicated and persistent people who are committed to this cause and instantly show up in the comment section of online news articles angrily objecting to various official claims and demanding to be presented with more "proof."

To these folks, I ask a simple question: what is your endgame? Suppose (purely for the sake of discussion) that you're right, and there is something technically deficient about Obama's claim to natural born citizenship. Maybe he was born overseas and his mother smuggled him into Hawaii just after birth. Maybe he floated into Pearl Harbor in a bassinet like Moses, from origins unknown. Maybe he descended from Krypton in an escape pod. Whatever the case, let's imagine that something like that happened and that you could somehow prove it. What then?

Obama was elected president by a large margin. He has approval ratings in the 70s. Most of his cabinet has been selected. The transition is well underway. And the country is in a very precarious state. Do you really think that a federal court is going to declare Obama ineligible to be president and plunge the country into chaos? Can you imagine the repercussions? Talk about "judicial activism." We would have a constitutional crisis of epic proportions. We would have riots in the streets.

Let me save you the suspense. That's not going to happen. Not in a million years. Even if you managed to get your hands on ironclad evidence that Obama was born somewhere else (which you won't), the courts will not entertain your claim. They will find some grounds (likely lack of standing) to dismiss your case. Trust me.

And don't lecture me about the need to uphold the Constitution though the heavens fall. Where were any of you during the last eight years as the Bush administration made a mockery of the separation of powers that is the central feature of the Constitution, advancing theories of executive power that surely caused every one of the signatories to that document to roll over in his grave?

And for that matter, where were you during the election when John McCain, a man born in the Panama Canal Zone, was running against Obama? There's a non-frivolous argument to be made that McCain is ineligible to be president by virtue of his place of birth, but that didn't seem to concern anyone.

More importantly, can we take a step back for a moment and consider the purpose of the natural born citizen requirement? The rationale behind the provision, presumably, is to prevent someone who has loyalties to another nation from becoming president. Even if Obama's birth certificate and birth announcement were somehow fraudulent (and there's no evidence of this), no one contests that he spent nearly all his childhood (except from age 6-10) in Hawaii. There's no dispute that Obama's mother was an American citizen and that she raised him from infancy in Hawaii. What possible reason would there be to bar him from serving as president? And what possible good could come from having Obama declared ineligible?

I really truly wonder what these folks imagine is the proper remedy for this supposed constitutional violation. What do they hope to accomplish? It's just so crazy.