Well it turns out that the person who has been touting President Barack Obama's foreign roots all this time has been none other than...Barack Obama himself. Sure, the record in words was left by his publicist back in 1991 when Obama's brief booklet was published. But is there any doubt Obama was totally aware of the, ahem, mistake? The question is why did Obama tout a foreign birth back then? Several reasons.

First, since the 1960's, lefty academics have thought it cool and avant garde to claim any non-white, non-American heritage. When I lived in New England, a woman who attended Columbia long before Barack Obama told me that as a white woman, dating a black man and being seen walking down the street in New York City with one, was considered a status symbol. We know from Obama's writings that as a college student he wanted to embrace his black heritage and move away from his preppy Punahou School background. What better way to do it than to claim Kenyan birth?

Second, Barack Obama wrote his first book Dreams From My Father to examine the defining but absent relationship with his father. Claiming Kenyan birth would identify him more clearly with his long-lost absent father, and at least psychologically claw back much of his long-lost absent-father youth. Furthermore, claiming African birth would line the future president up with the anti-colonial, anti-western views of his father, as discussed in Dinesh D'Souza's book The Roots of Obama's Rage.

Third, there was and always has been an academic advantage to claiming "foreign student" status when it came to applying for college scholarships and fellowships. The "diversity" agenda has made sure of that. There is some question whether Obama referred to himself and enrolled himself as an "international student" at Occidental and Columbia to take advantage of this.  The Elizabeth Warren Cherokee incident has shown the ridiculous lengths to which racial preferences have taken us. This erroneous appeal to foreign student status and its paper trail alone may be the reason President Obama has not released his college transcripts. Could it be that eager academics encouraged him to apply as a foreign student knowing that they were fudging the record?

The Obama booklet bio has given a strange twist to the "birther" phenomenon. The birthers are wrong that Obama was born outside the USA. But where did they get the idea? Why from Barack Obama himself. He wanted it to be so for a whole host of reasons.

Jay Haug is the author of Beyond the Flaming Sword available from Amazon.com.