October 21, 2009: Obama Thesis Hoax Purports to Prove President’s Intention to ‘Redistribute’ America’s Wealth to Poor

Michael Ledeen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes that according to blogger Brian Lancaster, Time reporter Joe Klein has been allowed to read the first 10 pages of Barack Obama’s college thesis, written while the president was an undergraduate at Columbia University. According to Ledeen and Lancaster, the thesis was titled “Aristocracy Reborn,” and contains the following excerpt: “[T]he Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.” Ledeen calls the statement “quite an indictment, even for an Ivy League undergraduate,” and says Obama’s supposed take on the Constitution is “revolutionary.” He concludes, “And what about the rest of the thesis?” Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh broadcasts extensively on the thesis, claiming that it is proof of Obama’s intention to “redistribute” America’s wealth to the poor by forcibly stripping the wealthy of their financial resources. Two days later, Ledeen reports that the “thesis” is entirely fictitious. Klein never wrote about it for Time and never read it. “It’s a hoax, or a satire, depending on your point of view,” Ledeen admits, having learned it was produced by Lancaster in August. Lancaster posted it on his Jumping in Pools blog on August 25, and clearly labeled it as “satire.” Ledeen writes: “So he got me, and lots of others. It worked because it’s plausible. I’ve done satirical pieces myself, and I know how they can take off.… So I should have picked up some hint, but I didn’t. Shame on me.” [Brian Lancaster, 8/25/2009; Pajamas Media, 10/21/2009; Pajamas Media, 10/23/2009; Time, 10/23/2009] According to the Obama campaign, Obama did not write a senior thesis while at Columbia. He did write a paper during his senior year for an honors seminar in American Foreign Policy, but neither Obama, the university, nor the professor of the seminar, Michael Baron, have a copy of the paper any longer. [Snopes (.com), 10/25/2009]