Man Claiming to Be Arizona Official Struggles through OIP Derangement Syndrome

Last month Ken Bennett, who publicly states that he is the Arizona secretary of state, struggled through a bout of OIP Derangement Syndrome. It started when he told a right-wing radio host:

I’m not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii—or at least I hope he was. But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking.

Bennett said that over a thousand people had sent him messages demanding he investigate Obama’s birth, and that he was expressing doubt about that well documented historical event only to satisfy their curiosity. Not, of course, because he was a co-chair of the Mitt Romney campaign in Arizona.

To that end, Bennett asked the government of Hawaii to send him “a verification in lieu of a certified copy of a birth certificate.” And to its credit, the Hawaiian government demanded that he prove that he’s really the Arizona secretary of state and responsible for presidential ballots.

When asked if he might exclude the elected President of the United States from the Arizona ballot if he wasn’t satisfied with another state’s standard legal document, Bennett said he might do that, “Or the other option would be I would ask all of candidates, including the president, maybe to submit a certified copy of their birth certificate. But I don’t want to do that.”

However, even days after Bennett went public with this policy, his office still hadn’t asked Michigan for its record of Mitt Romney’s birth, or any other state about other candidates. When Bennett first publicized that he was investigating the President, he stated flat out that he didn’t want to ask the same questions of all the candidates.

Since Bennett claimed to be taking this action only because of public questions, the Left Action group mounted an online petition to demand that he investigate the proposition “Mitt Romney is a Unicorn." As of 22 May, that petition had more than ten times the number of signers as had demanded that Bennett investigate and disqualify President Obama.

And on that date Bennett apologized to his state and said of the President, “He’ll be on the ballot as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has.” Has Bennett come out the other side of OIP Derangement Syndrome? Has he stopped insisting that this President go to ridiculous lengths without making the same demands of other politicians? We’ll see.

Meanwhile, Bennett is collecting signatures to run for governor of Arizona. The state represented in the Senate by John McCain. Who, according to a 2008 analysis of pertinent law by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, was not technically eligible for the Presidency. But of course officials like Bennett don’t try to apply such technicalities to a candidate like McCain.