Legitimacy
It is really pretty crazy that 24% of Americans believe this, but that's about the number who still thought George W. Bush was doing a good job in 2008. Perhaps these two beliefs are correlated.
But two other results struck me as even more interesting than that. First of all, the basic theory by people who talk about such things is that Obama was born in Kenya. That's what the faked documents are made to show, and where the real action is in the "discussion" (such as it is). Yet of respondents, 10% think Obama was born in Indonesia, and only 7% in Kenya. (More about the remaining 7% presently.) What does this mean?
What it must mean is that most people formed some kind of early belief about this, based on email forwards or something, and have interpreted all subsequent talk as confirmatory of their belief, when in fact they aren't even hardly talking about the same theory any more. These countries are basically on opposite sides of the world, the proposed mechanisms for Obama having been born in them are different (as they'd have to be).
And the other 7%? Well, 6% of respondents say that they don't think Hawaii is part of the United States. Others probably know that it is, but believe that since his parents weren't born in the United States, that makes him not a "natural born citizen." These geographical and legal misunderstandings mark the bearers as not just not paying attention to an arcane conspiracy theory, but in fundamental default on basic facts of the political reality around them.
So what's going on?
One possibility is that people who tell pollsters they don't think Obama is a natural born citizen don't actually believe it. That is, this belief is more of a statement that Obama oughtn't to be president rather than indicative of what they think. But why? Why express this opposition in such a silly and baseless way? It is manifestly clear that this theory has no chance of ever bearing any political fruit, and in fact may end up being harmful to the cause. But as is clear by the fact that virtually all of the people who believe in this are unmoored, not only from basic geographical facts, but from the conspiracy discussion itself, they are probably not well equipped or care particularly much what the political realities are. They may be in the mindset that opposition to Obama implies that they should believe he isn't even qualified to be President. That is, it is just a facet of the unacceptability of his presidency that infuriates them as a whole. Evidence suggests this may make up quite a substantial fraction of the people holding this view.
A fruitful exercise is to look at the circumstances surrounding George W. Bush's election in 2000. Most people opposed to his presidency believed that the Florida election was not fair. The fact that it hinged on such technicalities, and the realities of the error-prone ballots, made it appear that the outcome of the election was within the error bounds of the voting process itself, and that consequently, control over the process of vote-counting was determinative. The fact that Bush's brother and his campaign officials were in a position to exert such control made that belief irresistible.
I'm not saying these beliefs are based on the same kinds of footing; what I'm saying is that we don't have to look back very far before finding an instance where opposition to a president was tightly coupled with various theories of his illegitimacy. Polls in 2001 might have shown that a lot of people believed various versions of how Bush won Florida, all of which would be expected to occur in people opposed to him, and which formed part of the overall complaint about him. ¶ 11:16 PM
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
There's an interesting new poll breaking down what people who suspect Obama isn't a natural-born citizen believe.
It is really pretty crazy that 24% of Americans believe this, but that's about the number who still thought George W. Bush was doing a good job in 2008. Perhaps these two beliefs are correlated.
But two other results struck me as even more interesting than that. First of all, the basic theory by people who talk about such things is that Obama was born in Kenya. That's what the faked documents are made to show, and where the real action is in the "discussion" (such as it is). Yet of respondents, 10% think Obama was born in Indonesia, and only 7% in Kenya. (More about the remaining 7% presently.) What does this mean?
What it must mean is that most people formed some kind of early belief about this, based on email forwards or something, and have interpreted all subsequent talk as confirmatory of their belief, when in fact they aren't even hardly talking about the same theory any more. These countries are basically on opposite sides of the world, the proposed mechanisms for Obama having been born in them are different (as they'd have to be).
And the other 7%? Well, 6% of respondents say that they don't think Hawaii is part of the United States. Others probably know that it is, but believe that since his parents weren't born in the United States, that makes him not a "natural born citizen." These geographical and legal misunderstandings mark the bearers as not just not paying attention to an arcane conspiracy theory, but in fundamental default on basic facts of the political reality around them.
So what's going on?
One possibility is that people who tell pollsters they don't think Obama is a natural born citizen don't actually believe it. That is, this belief is more of a statement that Obama oughtn't to be president rather than indicative of what they think. But why? Why express this opposition in such a silly and baseless way? It is manifestly clear that this theory has no chance of ever bearing any political fruit, and in fact may end up being harmful to the cause. But as is clear by the fact that virtually all of the people who believe in this are unmoored, not only from basic geographical facts, but from the conspiracy discussion itself, they are probably not well equipped or care particularly much what the political realities are. They may be in the mindset that opposition to Obama implies that they should believe he isn't even qualified to be President. That is, it is just a facet of the unacceptability of his presidency that infuriates them as a whole. Evidence suggests this may make up quite a substantial fraction of the people holding this view.
A fruitful exercise is to look at the circumstances surrounding George W. Bush's election in 2000. Most people opposed to his presidency believed that the Florida election was not fair. The fact that it hinged on such technicalities, and the realities of the error-prone ballots, made it appear that the outcome of the election was within the error bounds of the voting process itself, and that consequently, control over the process of vote-counting was determinative. The fact that Bush's brother and his campaign officials were in a position to exert such control made that belief irresistible.
I'm not saying these beliefs are based on the same kinds of footing; what I'm saying is that we don't have to look back very far before finding an instance where opposition to a president was tightly coupled with various theories of his illegitimacy. Polls in 2001 might have shown that a lot of people believed various versions of how Bush won Florida, all of which would be expected to occur in people opposed to him, and which formed part of the overall complaint about him. ¶ 11:16 PM
