Republicans have tried but mostly failed to use David Maraniss’s “Barack Obama: The Story” to prove the president told big lies in his memoir “Dreams from my Father” and in other accounts of his past. The official Republican National Committee site has compiled every possible discrepancy the book supposedly reveals, even charging (which Maraniss does not) that he stole his mother’s line that “baking cookies wasn’t exactly at the top of her priority list” from Hillary Clinton. If only Mark Penn had known that in 2008!
In fact, what’s most noteworthy aren’t the discrepancies Maraniss found in Obama’s official story, but how many right-wing lies he debunked. The president was born in Hawaii. He is not a secret Muslim – in fact, his Kenyan father owed his education and his American sojourn to evangelical Christians. Those mysterious New York years? Not mysterious, just kind of dull. Which unsavory sponsor paid for his Ivy League education? Mostly his grandmother, along with some student loans.
