I've been wondering why so many people hate Obama so vehemently. Why is their most important political goal to defeat him? And by the "so many" I don't mean the puppet masters or the politicians. Clearly their motivation is dollars and cents. I mean the masses they appeal to.

It's not Obama's politics. No lefty he. Ask any lefty. He's a moderate, center of the road Democrat doing a pretty good job given the conditions but is certainly not what many on the left hoped for.

It can't be his health care plan. Nothing like single payer. It contains many elements first proposed by Republicans who certainly were not hated for them. He hasn't made a move on anyone's guns. He ordered the Bin Laden assassination. He is drone-bombing Al Qaeda beyond Bush's wildest dreams.

But they hate him.

He is spending more on the military and has repeatedly cut taxes.

Still they hate him.

He is accused of being a socialist. Accused of not being born here. Accused of having a Kenyan world view (does anyone, anyone at all, even a Kenyan, know what that is?) and wanting to import European political systems. His having bowed to the Saudi king is supposed to reveal his un-American loyalties. He is supposed to be opposed to capitalism and the American way and to follow Saul Alinsky who died when Obama was 10. And according to the latest from Newt Gingrich, Obama is basically un-American.

Why the campaign to alienize him? Why foreignize him? I have never seen this before. Those of us who despised Nixon and whose skin crawled at the thought that Dubya could be elected president for eight years still never thought of suggesting these guys were aliens. What does alienizing Obama appeal to?

Consider this hypothesis concerning the underlying thought processes of those who get sucked in by the alienizing. Obama better not be American because then he'd be an African-American. But he mustn't be an African-American. Much better if he is an African-Kenyan (?) or an African-Tasmanian or something. Why not an African-American?

Because he is smart, industrious, successful. Far more so than most of those sucked in by the alien-Obama argument.

Doesn't compute.

Law degree from Harvard. Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Elected U. S. senator from Illinois.

Doesn't compute.

If Obama is an African-American he carries uppitiness to an unheard of level. You can't be more uppity than to become the president of the United States. As an African-American he would be the personification of uppity.

As a literal alien he would merely be breaking the law. As a figurative alien his triumphs would say nothing about "real" African-Americans.

African-Americans are supposed to be lazy, shiftless, no-accounts who want handouts and will invade your home if you are not on the lookout, shotgun at the ready. They are supposed to survive on food stamps and receive the tax dollars that the government steals from hard-working white folk and gives to them to encourage them not to work.

An African-American Obama's life and successes would falsify these views that are clutched as tightly as the family shotgun. But if he is an African-Somewhere-Else-ian, everything is OK. He just demonstrates the opportunities for success to be found in the United States if you have an alien heritage and you want to work hard.

If Obama is an African-American, then all logic is shattered. He makes a mockery of racist calculations of people's inclinations and potentials. But if he is not, then all his successes and triumphs do not reflect one iota upon real African-Americans.

By alienizing him from America you alienize him from the people upon whom his successes and triumphs most reflect.

To the extent this hypothesis is true the hatred, then, is a surface manifestation of their deep-seated emotional response to Obama's putting the lie to their cherished notions concerning the place of the African-American.

Richard S. Bogartz is a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.