Presidential Hopeful Mike Huckabee Believed Obama was Raised in Kenya

GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is one of the current front runners to take on President Obama in 2012. He has managed to build a solid conservative base and his talk show is popular among much of the right wing faithful. But in a recent radio interview, Huckabee mistakenly spoke in great detail about how President Obama's upbringing in Kenya helped to form his foreign policies.

Huckabee talked about Obama's father and grandfather and the struggles they faced in Kenya while trying to break free of British imperial rule. The truth is that Obama didn't visit Kenya until he was 20 years old and he had no discernible relationship with his father. He was raised primarily in Hawaii, with a brief stint in Indonesia. Eventually, Huckabee's camp released a statement explaining that he misspoke. But given the depth of his commentary, that clearly wasn't the case.

Obviously, it's an honest mistake and - at the end of the day - not that big of a deal. But it's worth noting that a presidential hopeful was so clearly wrong about things that he felt confident enough to discuss during a radio interview. The points Huckabee made were logical, had they been based on accurate factual information. And even though it is undisputed that Obama didn't grow up in Kenya, the fact that Huckabee talked about it as if it were true speaks to the nature of political misunderstanding in America. So many people are so confused, uninformed or misinformed about the facts, that the discussions are often pointless.

Mike Huckabee did a great job, however, of explaining why he has no doubt that President Obama is a U.S. citizen, born in Hawaii. He pointed out that the Clintons, during the Democratic primary in 2008, most definitely would have uncovered problems with Obama's citizenship if any existed. A very insightful and compelling argument for Obama's citizenship, indeed.