The (presumed) president of the United States not only has not met that test but does not even try to — in his in-your-face, preternatural arrogance and audacity. 

Why not? What is really going on here? What game is being played? What ruse is being played on our country?

If the truth is as horrible as the extant evidence makes it appear, the implications are without limit. National hysteria and national insanity? More like national suicide. Even more accurately, for the nation that casually allows such a coup d’etat to be imposed, national assisted suicide may be the analogue.

We actually have been here before, sort of. The public could not bring itself to believe the numerous accusations against Bill Clinton. How could a U.S. president be not only a serial adulterer, liar and philanderer, but one that, for good measure, exposes himself to women who are near-total strangers?

Then we learned that the worst was indeed true. Clinton finally admitted to perjury and obstruction of justice in his plea deal (but without using those words explicitly). And even now, some cannot believe that John F. Kennedy regularly cavorted around the White House with Mafia call girls, but that has been verified. Then there is Richard Nixon.

We have been here before more recently. Barack Obama has had a long and close association with an anti-American terrorist involved in the bombing of the Pentagon and multiple police stations. The associate’s name is Bill Ayers, of course. No, Ayers was not just “a guy in the neighborhood,” as Obama tried to pretend. Moreover, and maybe worse, there were those 20 years as an even closer acolyte of the manifest anti-American, Marxist, racist preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

So lying about citizenship (or one of the reviewed possibilities that are nearly as bad) is junior varsity compared with Obama’s sordid personal history. Therefore, the preceding analysis is rendered mild and moderate, which makes it all the more plausible and troubling.

The conclusion: Barack Obama’s covered-up background is very likely sufficient to disqualify him from the presidency, perhaps or perhaps not constitutionally through noncitizenship, or more practically because of multiple acts of fraud and deceit over legal name and multiple citizenships. Full public knowledge would surely induce prompt impeachment or electoral pariah status, that is.

Again, poignantly, and finally, if one disagrees: Prove it. You are welcome to try. It should be easy. So why is it so hard? Yes, that question is rhetorical.

• Gaski is a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. His primary research field is the nature of social and political power.  He is author of “Frugal Cool” (Corby, 2009) and “The Language of Branding” (Nova Science, 2010) and is a longtime, but former, registered Democrat.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=570195&p=4