The current claims by the so-called Birther movement that Barack Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” of the United States may seem part of the lunatic fringe. But the Birthers’ basic premise – that the U.S. president is actually the agent of an enemy conspiracy – has a long history in America, and it highlights the tension between American openness and American paranoia.
The name “Birther” seems to be a direct reference to the far right John Birch Society of the late 1950s and early 1960s, whose members claimed that Earl Warren, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy, among others, were conscious agents of the international Communist conspiracy (and/or the anti-Christ). Robert Welch, a wealthy candy manufacturer, started the Society in 1958 and named it after an American missionary killed by Chinese Communists in 1945 — the first casualty of the Cold War, Welch said. The Birchers were strongest in California, where the organization’s ten thousand eager members stuffed envelopes, walked precincts, and worked phone banks for conservative Republican candidates.
California public officials disagreed over how much attention to give the Birchers. The state’s liberal attorney general, Stanley Mosk, refused to investigate them, calling them a “pathetic” group of “wealthy businessmen, retired military officers and little old ladies in tennis shoes.” But other Democrats, notably Gov. Pat Brown, viewed them as psychopaths and fascists who endangered liberal democracy. Some Republicans, like Richard Nixon in his 1962 gubernatorial race, denounced them; others, like Ronald Reagan, shrewdly repudiated the kookiest ideas of the Birchers but embraced the members.
The possibility of violence always lurked just beneath the surface of this allegedly “pathetic” group. If you accuse the president of treason, you are delegitimating the government and inviting the violent fringe to “save” the republic by removing the traitor. Contemporaries of the Birchers understood this. Immediately after President John Kennedy’s assassination, most insiders suspected a right-wing plot. Indeed, Texas businessmen had placed an ad that morning in the Dallas Morning News proclaiming JFK to be a communist agent, and a right-wing mob had attacked and spit upon U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson in Dallas just weeks earlier. After Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrest, Jacqueline Kennedy was upset to hear that “some silly little communist” had killed her husband; a fanatical right-wing assassin, she believed, would have invested his death with more meaning.
The Birchers were not the first to believe that the president of the republic actually intended to destroy it. Some FDR-haters, for example, believed he provoked the Pearl Harbor attacks, and held quiet celebrations when he died. And the trend continued into this century, with the 9/11 truthers seeing George W. Bush as a puppet controlled by Dick Cheney, who in turn did the bidding of the military-industrial complex by faking the 9/11 attacks.
The Birther movement melds this recurrent fringe suspicion of the president-as-enemy-agent with good old-fashioned American nativism and racism. Despite the short-form birth certificate posted on line, despite the testimony of Hawaiian officials that the longer form exists in storage in Honolulu, despite birth announcements in both Honolulu newspapers in August 1961, the Birthers contend that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president. (I discuss the birth certificate conspiracy controversy on BBC radio 4 here.)
The Birthers refuse to accept the documentary evidence of Obama’s birth in part because of his race, and in part because he’s “other” in so many ways. Every gift shop in Hawaii prominently features a book called A President from Hawaii , with a cover photo of our biracial president with a lei draped around his neck. To people like Cokie Roberts, who last year criticized Obama for vacationing in his home state, Hawaii is “exotic” and, you know, not really as American as her preferred getaway in Myrtle Beach. When the Birthers say they want their country back, this is what they mean: they feel threatened by a dark-skinned president from what they see as the geographical, racial, and cultural margins of America. Richard Hofstadter and David Brion Davis made this point decades ago in response to the Birchers: American diversity creates American paranoia. While fluidity has “opened new paths of opportunity,” Davis noted, “it has often been accompanied by feelings of guilt, isolation, and insecurity.” And fear of conspiracy.
It’s America’s relative openness and tolerance that makes it possible for Barack Obama to become president of the United States. It’s his difference that makes him so exciting to many of us – and so terrifying to the Birthers.
33 comments
August 7, 2009 at 3:39 pm
TF Smith
One of the (many) bizarre things about the “Obama ain’t a ‘merrican” believers is that:
A) if the genders/citizenship of his parents had simply been switched, would they agree that a (presumably) equally dark-complexioned man named (presumably) Stanley O. Dunham (“How ya’ doin? Stan Dunham, from Hawaii – put ‘er there!”) who had gone to Harvard and taught at Chicago was, in fact, a ‘merrican?
B) If that same guy – Stan Dunham, from Hawaii, I mean – had, rather than Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard, had gone to (just suppose) West Point, the Command & Staff College, and the AWC, would they still be out there ‘birthin’ and such?
Given that some of the GOP’s bright lights in the 1940s and 1950s thought that both George C. Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower were secret commies, maybe so, but geez, how the party has fallen…
Even Nixon at his worst understood there was a lunatic fringe and that it had to be kept on a short leash; nowadays, apparently the lunatics are running the party.
August 7, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Jonathan Dresner
Funny, I was just reading about the Bircher-birther-TEA party connection earlier today.
Even Nixon at his worst understood there was a lunatic fringe and that it had to be kept on a short leash; nowadays, apparently the lunatics are running the party.
Actually, my suspicion is that nobody’s running it, which is why there’s no leash.
August 7, 2009 at 8:31 pm
ben
TF: well, obviously, no; and it’s only bizarre if you take their worry at face value.
August 8, 2009 at 12:18 am
Linkmeister
I dunno. My dark-complected Filipino brother-in-law, born and raised in Hawai’i, is mistaken for Mexican when he goes to the Mainland. He’s so easy-going I don’t know whether that’s caused him any trouble. He’s usually with his wife, my red-haired blue-eyed sister, so maybe, maybe not.
August 8, 2009 at 7:10 am
ben
One might think that would increase the tendency for trouble.
August 8, 2009 at 8:04 am
drip
When you say ” long history”, I don’t think you’re kidding. Has anyone ever figured out whether the “natural born” clause was directed specifically at the island-born champion of the federal government and its central bank, or just a lucky coincidence?
August 8, 2009 at 9:13 am
Bill Harshaw
I think you’re stretching on the “direct reference”–“Bircher/birther” angle. If we need a noun designating those who believe Obama was born in Kenya, I think birther is a logical construction, at least given the “birth” root. Would you say “birthism” is the belief, or “birthians” for the believers? And given the Birchers were most notorious before the baby boom generation reached maturiy, I doubt the coiner of the term really remembered Mr. Welch.
I’d agree with you, Hofstadter, and Davis on the parallels of content, though, just not the label.
August 8, 2009 at 9:32 am
dance
I am wholly fascinated by the birthers. Their understanding of archives and citizenship is so—unique. Thanks for this piece.
Re gender—it’s probably worth seeing how reactions to Obama compare to attitudes toward the long history/tradition of white American women marrying “other” men, and often moving, living, adopting cultures, while men (white and military non-whites) bring home their “other” women. Sadly, I’m not equipped to offer anything about that.
August 8, 2009 at 10:33 am
SEK
I would’ve been so ahead of the curve! (Scroll down to the end of that comment.)
August 8, 2009 at 10:39 am
TF Smith
True enough.
Can’t we just start calling these people (and their leaders; the former mayor of Wasilla comes to mind) what they are?
Cranks?
Crackpots?
Demagogues?
Con men?
Grifters?
Operators?
Racketeers?
These are all perfectly good English words, with real meanings; investing these crackpots with the respect deserving of political opponents provides them with a legitimacy they have not earned and do not deserve.
A drunk mumbling in the corner of your local bar has as much intelligent thought to add to the marketplace of ideas as these idiots.
August 8, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Linkmeister
ben, which is why I said “maybe, maybe not.”
August 8, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Daniel
“When the Birthers say they want their country back, this is what they mean: they feel threatened by a dark-skinned president from what they see as the geographical, racial, and cultural margins of America.”
Well said. Great post, I was wondering about the birther name.
August 8, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Leinad
‘Birther’ is much more likely a follow on from ‘truther’, imo
August 9, 2009 at 10:41 am
David in San Jose
Obama should release the long form birth certificate. Of course this wouldn’t satisfy all of the “birthers”, but I think it would have the effect of minimizing their numbers.
August 9, 2009 at 11:08 am
JPool
David in SJ,
Don’t be silly. Nothing convinces these people and having the state of Hawaii change its policies in the false hopes of appeasing them would be foolish. You could realese twenty copies of the long-form bcs and each of them would be a forgery more cunning than the last. The original could tour the US on a train car under glass and school children made to visit it, and that would only demonstrate to these people how desparate the powers that be are to cover up the real truly truth.
August 9, 2009 at 11:45 am
ari
Not to mention, Obama’s probably perfectly happy to have the opposition take the form of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the teabaggers, and the birthers. The man couldn’t ask for better enemies.
August 9, 2009 at 11:54 am
Ben Alpers
The man couldn’t ask for better enemies.
Agreed. But as Clinton (and Gore) discovered, excellent enemies only take you so far.
August 9, 2009 at 12:01 pm
ari
That’s right, Ben. But in the meantime, I don’t think Obama’s in any hurry to make the birth certificate story go away. Having one’s opponents unmask themselves as lunatics has to be considered good fortune in almost any competition, I’d think, and especially politics. I mean, John Boehner. You have to be kidding, right?
August 9, 2009 at 12:04 pm
ari
To be perfectly clear, I don’t think Obama’s stoking the birth certificate story. But he seems perfectly happy to bask, at a safe distance, in its warm glow.
August 9, 2009 at 12:27 pm
David in San Jose
JPod,
I disagree, I think the “birthers”, like all religions have different levels of devoutness to their belief. I don’t think releasing the long form would increase the faith of the less devout. I also don’t how the state of Hawaii could release 20 different version of the long form birth certificate.
August 9, 2009 at 12:51 pm
JPool
David,
Check your perscription, or possibly adjust your position relative to the monitor.
Seriously, the sociology of religion thing is a bit clever, but official documents have already been released and attested to. The release of one more such document would change nothing. In fact, my “twenty copies” line, was partly just hyperbole and partly a response to the earlier parsing of the electronic copies of the short-form that the Obama capaign released last fall. The neo-natal birthers were taking that thing apart for evidence of fakery and photoshoppery based on smudges and the sorts of things that dont reproduce well in scans. After factcheck.org and others looked at the original and said “You’re all wrong/crazy” they moved on to the next thing. Any reporductions of the long form would just be fed into to the “But he can’t be!” machine.
August 9, 2009 at 1:01 pm
kevin
The man couldn’t ask for better enemies.
Seriously. Sarah Palin and her Twitter account are the gift that keeps on giving.
August 9, 2009 at 1:22 pm
ari
Seriously. Sarah Palin and her Twitter account are the gift that keeps on giving.
There’s the argument that Obama, with his smooth moves and racy race, has forced his opponents into this type of behavior. And there’s probably something to that. The man is an extraordinary politician. But I also think that some members of the opposition are just a bit off. And now that their party is out of power, they’re off their meds.
August 9, 2009 at 4:04 pm
kevin
Some of it does have to do with Obama, I think.
Bill Clinton came from whitest-of-the-white, working-class, Southern Baptist roots straight from the heartland, and he drove these people to the depths of batshit insanity.
Barack Obama was the product of an interracial marriage between an obvious feminazi and a Kenyan intellectual, a guy who once lived abroad and went to a scary madrassa when he was a kid, and then came up through the un-real American locations of elitist Hawaii and corrupt Chicago.
Clinton’s middle name was “Jefferson” and he was deemed to be a traitor to this country in the eyes of these people. So how does a guy whose middle name is “Hussein” stand a chance with them?
August 9, 2009 at 6:23 pm
dana
Of course this wouldn’t satisfy all of the “birthers”, but I think it would have the effect of minimizing their numbers.
Of course it wouldn’t. Look, Obama has released the form — THE FORM — that any Hawai’ian resident would get if they requested their birth certificate. This form is good enough to prove one’s identity to get a passport, a driver’s license, and any other number of forms. It has been verified by the Factcheck goons.
To put it another way, what is a picture of the original form going to provide that all the other evidence hasn’t? (“It’s a really old piece of paper and none of us have any damned clue what it’s supposed to look like, Todd, should we go down to the town-hall meeting now?”) You or I or anyone else is not going to be in a position to judge any better than we are now, and the conspiracy now would have the state of Hawai’i and/or the hospital placing an independent birth announcement in the papers to ensure that in 48 years, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Obama could be President. We have left reality behind. Are these birthers experts in 1960s Hawai’ian birth certificates? Is there any evidence at all they know their asses from a hole in the ground? Why legitimize them?
August 9, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Ben Alpers
Bill Clinton came from whitest-of-the-white, working-class, Southern Baptist roots straight from the heartland, and he drove these people to the depths of batshit insanity.
Couple thoughts about this….
First: Clinton did, in fact, drive these people insane. I think that’s worth remembering because, while a lot (a whole lot) of the Obamahate is about race, it’s not entirely about race. Whipping the GOP base into a frenzy of fear and hatred of (generally centrist) Democratic leaders is a more or less standard ploy of the modern conservative movement. While Obama’s race may be sufficient to provide material for such a ragegasm, it’s hardly necessary.
Second: Clinton also drove DC insiders crazy, essentially because he wasn’t really clubbable. Remember Sally Quinn’s infamous column on the eve of the 1998 midterm elections in which she quoted David Broder on Bill Clinton: “He came in here and trashed the place. And it’s not his place” ? Quinn’s purpose was to declare how much the Washington Establishment (her capitals), of which she is of course a major figure, detested the Clintons and wouldn’t forgive Bill his sexual peccadilloes, even if the rest of the country would. And though back in 2007 Sally Quinn herself expressed concerns that the Establishment really didn’t know Obama (“Who are his people?,” she asked….seriously is this some kind of parody of a 1950s country club?), my guess is that Obama will prove a more acceptable figure to the Washington Establishment than Clinton was. Chicago (and even exotic Hawaii) are a lot more “respectable” than Arkansas. And even the Washington Establishment can probably accept an “articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking” (in the Vice President’s famous phrase) African American. He will play Sidney Poitier to their version of 1960s Hollywood.
August 10, 2009 at 3:37 am
kevin
He will play Sidney Poitier to their version of 1960s Hollywood.
“They call me President Tibbs!”
August 10, 2009 at 7:11 am
kathy
It’s true that the far right would have conspiracy theories about any Democratic president, but it’s revealing to look at the substance of the theories. Clinton, they said, dealt drugs and killed people. Obama, on the other hand, is not a real American. It’s not what he’s done; it’s who he is.
August 10, 2009 at 10:51 am
TF Smith
The President Who Came to Dinner?
Anybody recall an Irving Wallace novel from the early ’60s with the protagonist being the first AA president of the US? “The Man”? – A potboiler, but kind of an interesting cultural artifact…
August 10, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Chris
”Who are his people?,” she asked….seriously is this some kind of parody of a 1950s country club?
The 1950s country clubs were just low-rent ripoffs of le bon ton. (Elitism for the masses must have seemed like a crazy idea at first, but if you have the right marketing you can actually pull it off, because your target market isn’t very bright.) I think that’s what Quinn and the rest of the Washington club think they are. (Or perhaps they don’t think anything of the sort; it’s possible they *are* the result of the same social and psychological forces that created the ton, but are insufficiently reflective to realize it. Convergence rather than deliberate imitation.)
August 10, 2009 at 5:10 pm
J. L. Bell
Re: Has anyone ever figured out whether the “natural born” clause was directed specifically at the island-born champion of the federal government and its central bank, or just a lucky coincidence?
Alexander Hamilton was eligible for the presidency as “a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution,” as the same clause allows. After all, no one could have been both born in the U.S. of A. and thirty-five years old in 1789.
August 10, 2009 at 6:28 pm
AaLD
Unless my text is wrong (published by the CA Secretary of State)that clause actually reads “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President;…” Unless the publisher slipped in an extra comma after “or a citizen of the United States,” it looks to me like “at the time of the adoption of this Constitution” applies to both preceding clauses.
Thus no one is eligible to be president unless he/she was either (a) born in the U.S., or (b) a citizen of the U.S., at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.
So, I think that pretty much rules out anyone living today, except maybe McCain.
August 10, 2009 at 10:54 pm
serofriend
After Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrest, Jacqueline Kennedy was upset to hear that “some silly little communist” had killed her husband; a fanatical right-wing assassin, she believed, would have invested his death with more meaning
Nice.