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X: “Maybe. My recollection, though, is that 30 years ago colleges weren’t all that keen on foreign and international students.”

I was born 4 days days after Obama (at least based on his forged birth certificate) and went to college the same years as Obama. So I can attest that there were large numbers of foreign and international students accepted into American colleges. I even went to school in Iowa which you would not expect to be a big haven for internationals yet they made up a very significant population at that time. So I disagree with your assertion on this point.

Secondly, as GeorgeW mentions, I think it was the nationality that he claimed on these applications that are the key and not so much the grades. As I understand it, these schools he “attended” had already seen evidence of rampant grade inflation and liberalization so he could very likely produce stellar grades just for towing the liberal line of theology. Many times the grades at schools like Harvard and Columbia are more honorary than evidence of intellect or hard work. It’s getting into these schools that’s the real trick. And evidently Obama found the proper benefactor or classification (foreign student?) to make it in.

There were foreign students, and colleges probably liked getting rich foreigners who could pay full tuition even back then. They weren't concerned about raising their number of non-paying foreign students. By contrast, there was a lot of interest in getting the numbers of "minority" students up.

A Kenyan might have counted as Black as well as an descendant of slaves from Chicago or Atlanta, but I doubt there would have been as much advantage to portray oneself as a foreigner as so many people assume. An African-American from a school like Punahou probably had a better chance of getting into Occidental than somebody from Nairobi or Djakarta who couldn't pay the tuition.

In the 70s and 80s there was grade inflation as compared to earlier decades, but Obama didn't make cum laude even in political science, which indicates that his grades at Columbia weren't very good. What you say about parroting a liberal line may apply to his HLS days, but he also had some ability to articulate at that point. Indications are that the younger Obama had trouble writing coherently. Not massive trouble, but enough trouble that it would have affected his grades.

Of course it's possible that Obama was hiding something else, but in 2008, he could get away with hiding whatever he wanted and he took advantage of that.