Where Were You Born Mr. President

Earlier this week I was considering my thoughts on all of these birther issues being raised by Donald Trump and others. It is interesting now in retrospect, after the President has released his certificate, that it appears it was Donald Trump and his antagonism that finally pushed Obama to do this.

If someone had a legitimate concern about where he was born then I guess it is fine to ask. I would like to think that if anybody ran for President with a foreign sounding European name that the same questions would be asked but I also think that we are naive if we think that would happen.

Barack Obama is different. He is the first African American President and truthfully it might be a long time before there is another one. A confluence of events occurred to put him in the white house that was unprecedented and truthfully unexpected.

The question is though is there something more. The truth is that since Bill Clinton was elected extending through GW Bush and now Obama we have not had another President that the opposing party truly honored and did not try to delegitimize Clinton did not win a majority and then he was not honorable, Bush stole the election and then governed like he won in a landslide and Obama, well lets just say he is not like the typical President.

What makes it different. Is it talk radio. With the 24 hour news cycle and the age of opinion rather than factual radio it is surely true that we are much more polarized. Our Congress does not need to work together and in fact are often punished when they are seen as working with the enemy. It was not so long ago that the opposing party members were considered colleagues and not enemies.

We cannot go back and it is unlikely that we will. It is good that the President settled this issue. The problem is that still, many who doubted his legitimacy will still find ways to do so. The President could learn from this the same lessons that he should have learned from his previous attempts at negotiations with the right, they will not work with him. If it his idea, even if it was thier idea the day before, then it is a bad idea.

If there is a center in politics then the folks in the center have to get much more involved and much more active. Until they do as Obama said we will have carnival barkers and sideshows dominating the news.