If Obama was trying to score a date with some lady at a publisher, I might go with the "exotic and cool" bit. But still it's a tiny audience and any publisher curious about him who spends a minute on Lexis/Nexis would find all the "born in Hawaii" stuff.
I note, in your first clip, his daddy, who was a worthless drunk, gets promoted from staff economist to finance minister. LOL!
Now you're really quibbling. "Senior Economist at the Ministry of Finance" (as Wikipedia describes him) in the Tribune article is "a minister of finance" (lower case; not "THE Finance Minister.") In the Herald he's an economist. I'm not seeing the promotion.
In your second clip, a legible version of which can be seen here, he disdains the suburbs and claims to have attended public school in Hawaii. He attended Hawaii's most exclusive private school. Obviously, he thought it served his image better to have gone to public school like the hoi polloi.
The context is his mother taking him away from Indonesia (where he WAS with the lower classes) to better schools in Hawaii. Did Obama say "public?" Perhaps. Did the journalist hear what wasn't there? Perhaps. (Most everyone I've known who's been interviewed and quoted in the media complains of errors). Does the difference affect the point of the paragraph? No.
A literary agent's job is to sell an author. Obviously, Miriam Goderich thought Obama would be more salable if Kenyan-born than American-born. And Obama must have agreed, since he left the "error" go uncorrected, despite knowing the truth was out there. He's a compulsive liar.