One of the biggest issues President Obama has had to deal with isn’t some foreign policy problem. Nor is it the health care debate. Nor is it the huge debt. While these are all issues that need to be dealt with, they aren’t the biggest ones. Much to the anger of many people, the biggest issue that President Obama has to deal with is whether he is an American citizen. In other words, people want to know whether he is actually eligible to be the President of the United States. This is a debate that has infuriated people on both sides—some think it’s stupid, others think it’s true.
But, this isn’t an article on how his birth certificate might be real or might be fake. There are millions of those already on the Internet. This is an article that touches on the poor public relations Obama and his team have done when trying to deal with the situation. In other words, they have created a public relations disaster rather than create an opportunity. And, this is an article that sums up that the question of what nationality President Obama might be is impossible to answer.
In public relations, when something bad happens to a company, you can react in two ways. Go head on into it, accept blame and get the job done or you can try and skirt around the issue and try to save time and money. The latter never seems to work because someone always demands some sort of an explanation. President Obama, much to my own curiosity, has decided to try and skirt the issue and spend millions of dollars to prevent people from seeing his information.
He has created this mess for himself. The first mess is with the birth certificate which he has refused to show people. Yeah, he showed the copy, but what about the original? He has refused to show it. Why? Then his school records. Why won’t he release them? If he released them, it would show he was born in America. Yet, he refuses to release them. Finally, his financial aid records. He refuses to release them. Why? Every time something comes up, he says no.
But, this has created another problem on top of the horrible public relations side of things. Try determining what nationality President Obama is. He was born in Hawaii according to the birth certificate he showed in 2007 and the newspaper clipping says he was born in Hawaii. But, then he went to Kenya after birth. Or was it before birth? Then he went to an Indonesian grammar school as a “Muslim.” Then he went back to America and went to some very rich colleges.
What nationality is he? He could be America; he could be Kenyan; he could be Indonesian. He could be, he could be, he could be. And instead of just stopping all of the discussion and just demonstrating that he is, in fact, an American citizen, he has made it a question that is impossible to answer. By creating this mess, President Obama has effectively, whether directly or indirectly, created a monster.
President Obama is going to deal with a lot of issues in the next two years of his Presidency and, if re-elected, his four years after that. But, if he doesn’t get rid of this issue now with a simple release of the documents—would be nice Mr. Transparency—then he will continue to deal with this until he leaves office in 2012 or 2016.
Rather than continue dealing with this very stupid situation, just release the documents and let’s get on our way. You brought this problem upon yourself and now it’s time to finish it so that the Birthers can figure out something else to hate you for. One issue at a time; let’s finish this one up.
