TODAY President Barack Obama visits the Irish Republic home to one of his ancestors at Moneygall in County Offaly and on April 27th, this year, amid rumours that he was not born in the United States, the White House released his birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii. It has been found that having Irish links traditionally benefits American Presidents and political bosses: the Kennedys spring to mind, as does Senator Joe McCarthy. Should doubts about origins of a great leader be a bar to office, must a political leader be definitely a native of the country in which he carries out his political activity?
History seems to prove the opposite. It almost seems a prerequisite that to lead a nationalist and xenophobic movement one ought to have alien origins. Hitler, one of the most successful dictators of the last century was born at Braunau am Inn, in Austria, and only a few years before becoming Chancellor of the Reich, he narrowly avoided being thrown out of Germany as an 'Undesirable Alien'. Another Great Dictator, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, was born at Salonika and we don't know for sure if he was Albanian or a Macedonian, and yet he was dictator of Turkey. He was another one who was almost expelled from Turkey as a foreigner. Napoleon Bonaparte was a Corsican, somewhere between French and Italian, and spoke bad French while ruling the French nation in the 19th Century. Stalin was a Georgian with a broad Georgian accent but it didn't prevent him ruling the millions of Russians and other nationalities.
This feature is even more prevalent in traditional forms of government such as the royal families of England, Russia, Spain, Romania which all had German or Austrian origins. While the Swedish dynasty descends from a Frenchman, a creature of Napoleon.
Already the Whitehouse has found Obama's ancestors in Ireland, and given enough time they may yet find that one of his ancestors landed with the pilgrims on the Mayflower.
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