That he was born in Kenya was in print in more publications than I can remember. I can show you copies of several, but can’t be bothered, you’re not worth the effort. The one person who spread this ‘born in Kenya’ story right from the outset, and more often than anyone, is still zero himself. That’s the man whose entire background has been sealed, and whose parents are still, after so many years, unknown.
Why would he have started this and never once made an effort to correct it?
Because it suited the myth of having a Kenyan student as a father. To accept that myth, you also have to believe all the rest of the fairy tale that is ‘Dreams From My Father’ -
a man he met once in his life.
What dreams?
Just who did the previous attorney general mean, when he said after his resignation, that zero was carrying on the work of his father?
A Kenyan drunk? A man who couldn’t support his own children? Who beat his wife, lived for a long period sleeping on the couch of a friend, didn’t have a job and ended his life driving drunk into a tree?
The Kenyan birth myth simply served zero, to keep you from asking who his real parents were and directed attention to Kenya. They could have chosen better. But the choice was made in 1961 and no one could have known what a failure that choice would turn out to be.
I really don't know who started it (I've heard the tale about the publicist and the book note), but you may be right that Obama actually worked to sustain it. I do think that his campaigns used it to tag his opponents as screwier than they really were.
A lot of us opposed Obama on substantive grounds (issues), but in order to be credible at all we often had to first overcome the suspicion that we were whacked-out birthers who couldn't accept the simple and obvious realities of his very birth. If we couldn't accept the validity of state records and contemporary newspapers, what point would there be in even discussing anything with us? Yes, I think that Obama benefited from the aura of delusion and paranoia that surrounded the entire birther movement.
So, you're right, it is entirely possible that the Obama campaigns gave quiet aid and comfort to the birther movement.