That raises the question: to whom would he show "the real thing?" There's no federal law regarding documentary authentication of a presidential candidate's qualifications. The FEC (which is virtually non-existent right now, by congressional design), doesn't have this responsibility. Basically, it falls to individual states to create their own documentary requirements (if any) for a candidate to register for a federal primary, and frankly, since this issue has never been raised before in a presidential campaign, I doubt that anyone working in a state office would have scrutinized a birth certificate two years ago.
This really wasn't even an issue until the media began to question McCain's place of birth as a possible disqualification. His campaign posted a scanned image of his original Panamanian birth certificate, and no one has questioned the authenticity of it. After that, there was a significant drumbeat (accompanied by the usual wild speculation) for a copy of Obama's birth cert. The manner in which it was posted -- on KOS -- didn't help matters, nor did some early apples-to-oranges "analysis" of two COLB images issued years apart.
That brings us back to the first question: who would be trusted to verify an original COLB? The state of Hawaii is under no obligation to release it, and I can't imagine any employee wanting to put themselves in the line of fire by doing it without authorization. Normally, it's the media demanding documentation, but could anyone seriously believe the NY Times (which hounded McCain for months regarding his health records, then meekly accepted a one-page summary report of Obama's fitness from his personal physician) or any other major media outlet, busy strewing daily rose-petals in Obama's path, if they declared it authentic?
That's because McCain didn't black out the only information that could trace it back to a physical record somewhere. By Obama doing that, he created the suspicion.
That brings us back to the first question: who would be trusted to verify an original COLB? The state of Hawaii is under no obligation to release it...
That brings up another point I raised a few weeks ago, via a hypothetical.
Why can't the state of Hawaii verify the information that Obama already released? By releasing what he has, hasn't Obama already consented on the privacy concerns? Shouldn't Hawaii be allowed to address information that Obama himself released publicly, since he already gave up that privacy?
And since what Obama released was purported to be an official Hawaiian certificate of live birth, shouldn't Hawaii be able to now discuss the issues around that certificate, like the blacked out certificate number? To me, the blacked out Certificate Number is actually Hawaii's data to own. They assigned that number to Obama for their purposes, not his. That number identifies Hawaii's records, not anything about Obama. Since Obama already mitigated normal privacy concerns, Hawaii's filing number shouldn't be of question either.
Finally, here's the hypothetical: what if the document is a forgery? Would Hawaii be able to look up their records and see if there is a certification on file with a number for Obama? If yes, then just say so. If no, then there is no legal barrier to Hawaii saying they have confirmed that there is no record on file.
Just to play with that hypothetical a little longer, would Hawaii be protecting a liar's "right to lie privacy" by not exposing the fact that a document does not exist when a party says that it does?
In other words, do I have a right from all the states that I wasn't born in, for those states to not expose that they don't have a birth certificate on file for me, just in case I choose to lie to somebody about it for personal gain?
-PJ