"President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period," said Donald Trump today.

"Now, we all want to get back to making America strong and great again," but before getting back to that he saw fit to add: "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”

Did Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign start the "birther" controversy? The linked article, in the NYT, says:

During the 2008 Democratic contest, Mrs. Clinton’s senior strategist at one point pondered, in an internal memo that was later leaked, the ways in which Mr. Obama’s personal background differed from many Americans. But contrary to Mr. Trump’s assertion, neither Mrs. Clinton nor her campaign ever publicly questioned Mr. Obama’s citizenship or birthplace, in Hawaii.

Is that bait the Clinton campaign should take?

The Clinton campaign signaled on Friday that it does not plan to let Mr. Trump slide on the subject, pointing out that he has falsely claimed that the Democratic nominee was initially responsible for raising the questions and noting that he continued to question Mr. Obama’s birthplace for years after the release of his birth certificate.

This is forcing me to go look it up, because I honestly don't know the answer and I would have left this old issue behind.  I'm going to read a Breitbart article from a year ago, and then a CNN article from last May. After I've done that, I'll form an opinion about whether Trump or Hillary should want to bring this up now.

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof asks "Is Donald Trump a Racist?," looks for concrete evidence, and finds it.

Many people are just incanting Trump is a racist and expecting you to already know and be on the same page, but I'm not that kind of go-along-to-get-along person. (Ironically, the go-along-to-get-along person is, in a different context, amenable to racism and to following a demagogue and so forth, so I'm happy with my standing apart from the Trump-is-a-racist crowd.)

But Nicholas Kristof, in a short column, undertakes to assemble the evidence, looking at nearly half a century of Trump's very extensive activities in this world. Kristof concludes that Trump is, indeed, a racist, but what matters is the evidence. By presenting evidence, Kristof puts us in a position to judge for ourselves. He also exposes himself to our judgment if his assessment of the evidence is biased. How much evidence do you need before you see — as Kristof does — "a narrative arc, a consistent pattern" that can't be called anything "else... but racism"?

For that great length of time, there should be an awful lot to amount to a consistent pattern, so let's look at Kristof's evidence:

1. In 1973, when Trump was 27 and working with his father, the Nixon administration Justice Department sued the Trump organization for housing discrimination. The government used testers, and, as Kristof puts it: "Repeatedly, the black person was told that nothing was available, while the white tester was shown apartments for immediate rental." The lawsuit was settled, and: "Three years later, the government sued the Trumps again, for continuing to discriminate." Kristof doesn't say how that lawsuit was resolved, and he concedes that Trump "inherited" whatever the policy was. Kristof does not talk about whether there is evidence of discrimination after the mid-1970s, after Trump is out from under his father's dominance. And Kristof — I think quite unfairly — gives absolutely no attention to the absence of evidence.  If Donald Trump began in a business where excluding black people was the norm, and he ended that discrimination, avoiding even accusations, that should count as an achievement, and the failure to notice this is evidence of bias in Kristof.

2. Trump took out an ad in 1989, saying that the 5 teenagers who were convicted of raping and beating the "Central Park jogger" deserved the death penalty we should bring back the death penalty. You can read the ad here. It resonates with today's politics. ("What has happened to our City... What has happened to law and order...?") There's nothing racial in the text — other than a mention of the "families — White, Black, Hispanic and Asian" — who are suffering from the "muggers and murderers" who plague the city. But, Kristof tells us, the 5 who were convicted in the Central Park jogger case were "black and Latino." Kristof accuses Trump of "whipping up the crowds" in "a modern version of a lynching," but the young men were brought to trial and prosecuted, and the problem of law and order in New York was very real. Somebody raped that woman and left her naked, tortured, and in a coma. In those decades, New York was a scary place, and a person going into Central Park at night was considered a fool. I was a woman living in the city in those days. It was a very different place, where you were supposed to be smart and know that you were always in danger. Donald Trump spoke out about that. In later years, the men who were convicted — and who confessed — obtained their release because they did not match the DNA from the victim. This was a complex and important incident in which Trump played a role. Was that role racist? Decide for yourself. Is it part of a "consistent pattern" of racism? It's unlike everything else on this list. And by the way, does Trump get credit for vigilance about violence against women?

3. One former Trump casino worker, back in the 1980s, was quoted in The New Yorker saying: "When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. … They put us all in the back." So, there's hearsay from one person about what was a practice purportedly involving many other persons. Has anyone ever produced the evidence that this was a real practice or tried to figure out who demanded the practice? Where are all the lawsuits about he mistreatment of black employees in the many establishments Trump's organization ran? You just have one man saying something back in the 80s! That's the absence of a pattern. 

4. There is a book written in 1991 that has a quote from Trump complaining about one black accountant and calling him lazy and then making a racial wisecrack: "And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control." Trump denies saying that, but even if it's true, where's the pattern? He made one regrettable racial joke a quarter century ago! If you're proving a pattern, shouldn't you have at least 25 racist jokes? I'd say there's an amazing lack of material like this. Has Hillary ever, in her 7 decades of life, remarked, after criticizing an individual, that maybe he couldn't help it, because he belongs to a group that people think of as having a particular characteristic? Are we going to label "racist" anyone who's ever said one thing like that, even decades ago? We could all sign the "Everybody's a little bit racist" confession, but then what? Why are we losing our minds over Trump being racist?

5. Trump made a show of demanding to see Obama's birth certificate. Obama was running for President and needed to meet the constitutional requirement that he's a natural born citizen. Is that racist? Because Obama is black? Because the possible other country of birth is in Africa?

6. There's Trump's statement that people entering the country illegally from Mexico are "in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists." Kristof concedes that "Latinos can be of any race," so "technically" it's "not so much racism as bigotry."

7. There's the call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. Again, as Kristof concedes, that's not "technically" racism.

8. Trump didn't distance himself quickly and decisively enough from from the Ku Klux Klan in a television interview.

9. Trump retweeted some things: "a graphic suggesting that 81 percent of white murder victims are killed by blacks (the actual figure is about 15 percent)," "messages from white supremacists or Nazi sympathizers."

That's it. That's all the evidence Kristof put together — from an event-filled half century career — and which he reads as "a narrative arc, a consistent pattern." Judge for yourself.

"Ted Cruz is a totally unstable individual. He is the single biggest liar I’ve ever come across, in politics or otherwise, and I have seen some of the best of them."

"His statements are totally untrue and completely outrageous. It is hard to believe a person who proclaims to be a Christian could be so dishonest and lie so much."

So begins "DONALD J. TRUMP RESPONDS TO THE LIES OF SENATOR CRUZ AND WARNS OF LEGAL ACTION."

ADDED: "Cruz says I am in favor of ObamaCare, when in fact I have spoken about repealing and replacing this disaster of a system at every speech throughout my campaign and since it’s inception." Can he not afford a copy editor?

AND: Key paragraph:

One of the ways I can fight back is to bring a lawsuit against him relative to the fact that he was born in Canada and therefore cannot be President. If he doesn’t take down his false ads and retract his lies, I will do so immediately. Additionally, the RNC should intervene and if they don’t they are in default of their pledge to me.

There's no direct connection between the lies he's citing as his motivation to sue and the ground for the lawsuit, the argument that Cruz is not a natural-born citizen. I know Trump has deal-making as his model for just about everything, but it comes across as a threat to file a lawsuit. He's also threatening to run as a third-party candidate, laying the groundwork, dragging the RNC into the conflict, demanding that it intervene or he's seeing himself as released from his pledge not to go third-party. 

"Will the G.O.P. Response to Antonin Scalia’s Death Hand the Election to the Democrats?"

Asks John Cassidy at The New Yorker, and you might wonder why the question doesn't work the other way too: Why not ask Will the Democratic Response to Antonin Scalia’s Death Hand the Election to the GOP?

The way I asked the questions yesterday was:

Will liberals overreach and show too much of a raging desire to control the Court and make it solidly liberal at long last, touching off a reaction among conservatives? Or will conservatives flare up with hostility to women's rights and gay rights and affirmative action and all the many issues that make them look too mean and ugly?

I gave some balance to it, a question for both parties, but you can see by the difference between my questions that the GOP is tempted in a different way, lured to move the social issues forward and alienate people. Like what happened back in the War of 2012, the War on Women.

But let's see why Cassidy thinks the GOP is exposed in a way that the Democrats are not. He's saying that political maneuvering to hold the nomination for the next President is an "apparent contravention of precedent and the U.S. Constitution." Nice use of the word "apparent" to avoid responsibility for an actual constitutional law interpretation.

But, really, does it matter what the Constitution means? (Especially now that Scalia is dead. It can mean whatever we need it to mean now. The bulwark is gone. Let creativity run wild.)

Just as Donald Trump wrings political energy out of saying that Ted Cruz is not a "natural born citizen," Democrats can get something out of saying Obama has the right to fill the vacancy. The President has a power to nominate new Justices, subject to the check of the Senate, which must confirm. It's balanced power, to be played out politically.

So what if the GOP-dominated Senate plays hard? Cassidy says it will "prompt" "outrage" "among Democrats and independent-minded Americans who dislike partisan warfare." The GOP "appears to be intent on hurtling into a deep pit." Obviously, Cassidy wants to scare the Republican Senators away from pushing back, checking the President's power with their own power, but you've got to play chess games looking ahead several moves.

The GOP will also say it's partisan politics, and this argument will be boosted by the usual claim that liberal Supreme Court Justices infuse their opinions with political preference that does not belong in constitutional interpretation. They'll celebrate their dead icon Scalia, whose method of interpretation will be presented as politically neutral and legally solid. We need another Justice like him, they will say. How terrible to allow Obama to install the 5th vote that achieves a liberal majority on the Court, they will say. Not only is the delay crucial, but the next President must be a conservative, they will say.

Cassidy says:

If the Republicans block the nomination without properly considering it, which also seems likely, a huge political row will ensue, enveloping the Presidential race....

Small wonder, some senior Democrats already appear to be dancing a jig. 

"Dancing a jig"?! Dancing on a man's grave? Is it not obvious how the GOP will respond? That was the basis of my question yesterday: "Will liberals overreach and show too much of a raging desire to control the Court and make it solidly liberal at long last, touching off a reaction among conservatives?"

The jig of raging desire is revolting to those who do not share the Democratic orientation.

ADDED: The title of this post is the title of Cassidy's essay that appears with the essay, but in the sidebar "Most Popular" list the title is "Will Scalia’s Death Boost the Democrats?" That's a much uglier image, depicting the dead body as a step stool. The Democrats are just hopping up on it. In the more sober title, the bad behavior comes from the Republicans and the Democrats stand by decorously, merely accepting what is handed to them.

AND: Here's the membership of the Senate Judiciary Committee, through which any nomination must pass. One notable face: Ted Cruz. What an opportunity for him to perform in The Theater of Proper Constitutional Interpretation. The GOP hold the majority and can calmly control the vote. The trick will be maintaining scrupulous dignity and veneration of constitutional principle. Expect Antonin Scalia to be canonized as the Saint of Constitutional Principle. The Democrats will not have him as their scary monster anymore. Dead, he's an angel. It will be hard to say his seat should be filled by someone unlike him.

That game has been played successfully: I'm thinking of the vicious fight that flared up when George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to take the seat that Thurgood Marshall had vacated. That happened in 1991, with the presidential election a year away. Bush won that fight, even with a Democratic majority on the Judiciary Committee, but he proceeded to lose the election. Obama doesn't face reelection, so he can perhaps absorb the heat, and he has an opportunity to pick someone that will be very damaging for the other party to attack. I'm sure he's working on an exquisitely strategy.

ALSO: "Scalia's Grave-Dancers Deserve a Harsh Verdict," by Stephen Carter. 

Searching for news that there's been an official decision that Ted Cruz is a "natural born" citizen...

... my favorite result is: "Kitchen gadgets review: Looseleaf kale stripper – not a natural born kaler/Unless you work in an LA smoothie bar, you probably don’t need this gadget... It’s a great green stripper – but not a natural born kaler."

More on point is: "Ted Cruz Is A 'Natural Born Citizen,' [Illinois] Board Of Election Finds":

Two objectors... had challenged Cruz's presidential bid with the board, contending that his name should not appear on the March 15 ballot because his candidacy did not comply with Article II of the Constitution....

"The Candidate is a natural born citizen by virtue of being born in Canada to his mother who was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth," the board said, reasoning that Cruz met the criteria because he "did not have to take any steps or go through a naturalization process at some point after birth."...

The Washington Post just put up an article, "What would it take to find out for sure if Ted Cruz (or others like him) is eligible for the presidency?" The main point is that the best way for there to be a case that could be litigated in federal court would be if a state were to exclude Cruz from its ballot, because that would give Cruz the kind of concrete injury needed to satisfy the requirement of standing.

There's also some potential for someone to sue in a state court, where standing requirements can be more lenient  (and then if Cruz were to lose in state court, he'd have the kind of injury from the state court judgment that would give him standing in the U.S. Supreme Court, which could choose to take the case).

The riveting dismal dark world of the GOP debate.

How the morning after looks on the front page of The Washington Post:



From Stephen Stromberg, it's "The dismal, dark, traitor-filled world Republican candidates inhabit." Stromberg cherry picked — cherries for anti-GOP-ers — the most negative statements. Things like:

"Our military is a disaster. Our healthcare is a horror show…. We have no borders. Our vets are being treated horribly. Illegal immigration is beyond belief. Our country is being run by incompetent people."

Is that dismal? It's a foundation for saying we need change. Somehow when Obama ran in 2008, the call for change was deemed optimistic by the Strombergs of the press.

The original meaning of "dismal" is literal — dies (days) mali (evil) — evil days. OED:

The dies mali, evil, unlucky or unpropitious days, of the mediæval calendar, called also dies Ægyptiaci, ‘Egipcian daies’... hence, by extension, Evil days (generally), days of disaster, gloom, or depression, the days of old age.

Today, it just means "depressing, wretched, miserable." I think Stromberg's point is people want optimism, so they don't want Republicans. Those horrible people are all doom and gloom. Stay away! Toxic! It's a warding-off that works on many, many people, probably most of the people I know in real life.

Jennifer Rubin has "The Charleston GOP debate: A series of riveting face-offs." She stresses the energy. "Rubio was noticeably energetic and on message." Except for "Kasich and Carson, who seemed to suck the energy out of the room with each answer." And she loathes Trump. ("He was set back on his heels briefly but got several minutes to talk about birtherism, which was probably what he wanted.") She focuses on "face-offs." They were "riveting."

On the birther issue, Cruz likely won on points, chiding Trump that he once dismissed the citizenship issue. “The Constitution hasn’t changed. But the poll numbers have,” he said to laughter and applause. “And I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling in Iowa.”

(Actually it is Cruz who is in trouble in Iowa). Cruz continued, suggesting that virtually everyone on the stage might have a challenge brought, even Trump, whose mother was Scottish.... Trump kept insisting that Cruz could not “do that to the party,” set the presidential ticket up for legal challenge, so any doubt about his eligibility was enough to worry. Unfortunately, this exchange was Cruz’s high-point.

Unfortunately, for Cruz, you mean. Cruz made a good point about "natural born" extremism. Some people think both parents ought to have been born in the United States, and that would disqualify Trump. (And also Obama.) But people that extreme don't matter much, it remains a fact that Cruz was born in Canada, and — who knows? — there's something lovely about a mother born in Scotland. (Trump's paternal grandfather and grandmother were also immigrants. They were from Germany.)

Rubin's next line, as she dismisses Cruz, is:

Rubio then stepped in, winning the moment by declaring, “I hate to interrupt this episode of Court TV,” and went onto a withering criticism of President Obama. It was a presidential-caliber moment.

Rubin also highlights the Cruz/Trump exchange about New York, which was for me the most memorable part of the debate:

However, on “New York values” Cruz landed with a thud, insisting no conservatives come from Manhattan and that New York is the bastion of liberalism and money (not mentioning Goldman Sachs). Here, Trump came back with a vengeance, dropping William F. Buckley Jr.’s name as a conservative New Yorker (he was actually from Connecticut) but then gave his best answer in a debate extolling the people of New York after 9/11, recalling the “smell of death.” Cruz had nothing to say in return.

Cruz must have thought the "New York values" theme would really hurt Trump, and I presume he had the attack worked out in advance.  Trump — who hadn't prepared — immediately, devastatingly flipped it. That was so good, so dramatic.

ADDED: Video and text of Trump's spontaneous paean to New York.

"Sadly, there is no way that Ted Cruz can continue running in the Republican Primary unless he can erase doubt on eligibility. Dems will sue!"

Tweeted Trump — really doubling down now.

A Slate writer proclaims Trump's aspersions on Cruz's natural-born citizenship "sort of brilliant."

Cruz, born in Canada, was a citizen at birth because his mother was an American citizen, and there isn't going be to a court case interpreting the "natural born citizen" clause of the Constitution to require anything more than that. If Cruz is a good-enough natural-born citizen, the question whether Obama was born in Kenya should never even have come up, because Obama's mother was an American citizen. Who cares where she was? Should pregnant women refrain from international travel lest they disqualify their offspring from the presidency?

But voters can take whatever they like into account. Maybe a candidate doesn't seem American enough to be trusted with the presidency. That would have been the better argument with Obama, who had a foreign father and step-father and spent much of his early years in Indonesia. And — think about it — Hawaii is awfully disconnected from the great bulk of America. And then he staged a big rally in Berlin. One might say that the "natural born citizen" clause — whatever it means technically — embodies a principle that the President needs to be very fundamentally American, utterly disconnected from any foreign power. Use that principle to leverage political arguments. If you can.

That's what I think. Now, here's the Slate article, by Jim Newell, "Does Ted Cruz Have a 'Birther' Problem?/Why Donald Trump’s new attack on the Texas senator is pitch perfect."

[Trump] is not running around saying There’s no way that Cruz is eligible!, which is usually how he rolls. He is saying that Cruz has a responsibility to the party to clear himself through the courts in the event he wins the nomination. “How do you run against the Democrat, whoever it may be,” Trump said on CNN Wednesday, “and you have this hanging over your head if they bring a lawsuit?”...

Many Republican primary voters, in large part because of Cruz and Trump’s rhetoric this campaign, are inclined to pick up on and feel unnerved by even the smallest whiffs of foreignness.... The fear of something, however improbable, happening to the Republican nominee ahead of the general election and “handing” the race to Clinton is a nagging one....

When Trump started talking about Cruz’s birth this week, he was not universally condemned, as he usually is when he says something strange. There’s been a surprisingly broad range of actors fanning Trump’s statement. Sen. Rand Paul.... Sen. John “Panama” McCain, who hates every atom in Cruz’s body... Ann Coulter.... And don’t expect Democrats to get in the way of Republican “birthers” devouring themselves, either.....

"The Cruz Birthers."

"Though he bears all the marks of a Texan — the swagger, the signature twang, and the ever-present cowboy boots — 42-year-old Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a Cuban father. By dint of his mother’s citizenship, Cruz was an American citizen at birth. Whether he meets the Constitution’s requirement that the president of the United States be a 'natural-born citizen,' a term the Framers didn’t define and for which the nation’s courts have yet to offer an interpretation, has become the subject of considerable speculation."

"No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where we were born and raised."

Said Mitt Romney at a campaign stop today in Michigan — "this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born." Video at the link.

I'm seeing some charges that this was a "birther" joke and even that it was racist. I guess it hit a nerve.

Anyway, it's obviously not racist. In fact, it's more racist to call it racist. To see it as racist, you have to have a background belief that to think of someone as a natural-born citizen is to think of him as white. Who thinks that?!

And it's also not "birther" to say what Romney said. A birther is someone who thinks or isn't sure that Obama was born in one of the United States. But the joke doesn't depend on the listener being a birther. You simply have to understand that people had enough questions about where Obama was born that they wanted to see the proof. People don't have those questions about Romney, so no one ever asked him to prove it. That's all Romney said.

Now, we could look more deeply into why people had these questions about Obama. These questions certainly weren't because Obama is black (or half-black). The questions were because his father was not an American citizen, because his mother — and young Obama — lived for a substantial amount of time outside of the United States, and because — to some people at least — Obama hasn't seemed sufficiently American. (He doesn't identify with American exceptionalism, he sat still for "God damn America" sermons, and so forth.)

Romney is saying — in so many words — I'm more truly and fundamentally American than Barack Obama. And the implication is: I want you to think about the ways that Obama hasn't fully embraced American values of freedom, capitalism, etc. etc.

Of course, you don't have to be born in America to have those values. I imagine Ted Cruz has those values, and he was born in Canada. He might make a great Senator from Texas soon, but he can never be President. We don't need to see his birth certificate, because it's no secret. He's not qualified to be President, and it's no disparagement of him to say that. But notably — and pay attention now, because this should help with understanding Romney's joke — no one running against Cruz would make a joke about his being born outside of the United States. Romney's (implicit) joke about Obama works not because of where he was actually born, but because of much more substantive ideas about commitment to foundational American values.

ADDED: Instapundit agrees with me and adds that the press will miss this point and, thinking the joke hurts Romney, will "spread the idea further than Romney could on his own." He also prints email from a reader saying  "Why does Ann Althouse assume Ted Cruz is not eligible to be President just because he was born in Calgary? Both of his parents were American at the time of his birth, and his mother was American by birth." I didn't mean to be the first Ted Cruz birther! I agree that if both your parents are American citizens and you are therefore an American citizen at birth, that's good enough for the constitutional requirement.

Michele Bachman renounces her Swiss citizenship "to make it perfectly clear: I was born in America and I am a proud American citizen."

"I am, and always have been, 100% committed to our United States constitution and the United States of America."

New Hampshire kid asks (nearly) all the GOP candidates what superhero they'd like to be.

(Via Bloggingheads.)

Why would a candidate say anything other than Superman? You just know they're probably going to say Superman. (Santorum and Huntsman don't.) So I think follow-up question would be: Could Superman be President of the United States? See if you can get a big "natural born citizen" thing going.

The Supreme Court is not interested in clearing up the noncontroversy about whether Barack Obama is a "natural born citizen."

"In a brief order, the Court, as expected, turned aside a New Jersey voter’s plea for the Court to determine if President-elect Barack Obama was qualified to run for the White House — that is whether he was a “natural born citizen.” The stay application came in the case of Donofrio v. Wells, Secretary of State of New Jersey (08A407). This marked the second time in recent weeks for the Court to turn aside such a challenge; the first came on Nov. 3, in Berg v. Obama (08A391). The Court, in neither instance, gave reasons for turning down the applications."

Doubters will have to nurse their doubts on their own for all eternity. Tough luck, you nutty skeptics! Meanwhile, life goes on. Barack Obama will be President. Deal with it.