Maybe Haley Barbour Should Visit A Bookstore Sometime -The Washington Monthly

Haley Barbour thinks Obama is mysterious and scary:

He went on to say -- just as "an observation," of course -- that "there's not much known" about the president's youth. "We don't know any of the childhood things," Barbour argued.

I guess the follow-up for the governor question is, "Who counts as 'we'?"

I have a strong hunch that Haley Barbour doesn't spend a lot of time in bookstores, but there's an entire book about Obama's upbringing. Obama wrote it. It was a best-seller.

"We" arguably know more about this president than any in modern times -- his life has literally been an open-book that "we" can read.

The larger point remains the same, and it remains ugly. Far-right leaders, most notably those with problematic backgrounds on race, are obsessed with characterizing the president as some kind of foreign "other" to be mistrusted and seen as illegitimate. It's absurd and offensive, but it remains at the center of conservative thought.