Just as an aside, I wonder if one thing that contributed to birtherism’s beginings is the fact that John McCain was born in Panama. He was born on a military base, and given the position of his father in the Navy, there was never any question about his being a natural-born citizen.

I wonder if someone in the McCain camp wanted to defuse any possible controversy about McCain’s birthplace with a strategy of “the best defense is a good offense”. Make a fuss about the where McCain’s opponent (Obama) was born, make a lot of noise, and the controversy about McCain’s birth would be neutralized.

Of course, I don’t remember there ever being a controversy about McCain’s birthplace, so going after Obama’s birthplace turned out to be unnecessary, and plain silly. Also, all these years later, it seems quite clear that the motivation for birtherism is racism, pure and simple: Obama is not “one of us”. Still, birtherism is so obviously silly, that I sometimes wonder how it got started in the first place.