Birthers Hijacking Debate May Be Boon for Obama: Albert R. Hunt

American presidents routinely have been savaged: Abraham Lincoln was called a “hideous baboon,” Dwight Eisenhower a communist and Franklin D. Roosevelt was described with epithets unprintable in this space. Few if any, however, have had the very circumstances of their birth or childhood questioned, until Barack Obama.

Claims by the so-called birther movement that the 44th president wasn’t born in America and that his worldview was shaped by a Kenyan heritage are no longer the province of the nutty fringe and are being cited by some leading conservatives.