Every time I hear Donald Trump talk about President Obama’s birth certificate, I think of O.J. Simpson.

The conspiracy theory invented by Simpson’s defenders was every bit as loopy as the fantasies concerning Obama. Remember the O.J. defense ruse?

Years before the murder, conspirators would have had to incite Simpson to commit domestic abuse, laying a foundation for a future motive.

Several weeks before the murder, an O.J. doppleganger would have purchased a knife exactly like the weapon used in the slayings.

The night of the murder, someone would have to take the eyeglasses of Nicole Brown Simpson’s mother, providing the reason for Ron Goldman’s presence.

And Brentwood resident Jill Shively would have to be falsely convinced that she had seen O.J.’s Bronco speeding away from Nicole’s house.

The first police responder would have to know to call Mark Fuhrman, so he could discreetly get blood from the crime scene while also picking up one of the real murderer’s gloves.

Then Fuhrman would’ve needed to head over to Simpson’s to sprinkle blood on the driveway, in the white Ford Bronco, and on Simpson’s socks somewhere inside the house. He would also need to deposit the bloody glove behind Kato Kaelin’s apartment.

Then, four days after the murder, after O.J. serendipitously cut his hand and volunteered an incriminating statement to police, one of the conspirators would have had to put cash and a disguise in the Bronco, and programmed the vehicle to drive toward Mexico with O.J. inside.

I don’t know why prosecutor Marcia Clark’s summation did not more cogently articulate the absurdity of this defense. I’m also not sure it would have made any difference. Perhaps the same is true of any birth-certificate analysis, but consider nevertheless what’s needed to hold this conspiracy together:

The plot would need to span five decades.

It begins with the future president’s birth in Kenya eight months after his parents had gotten married in Maui. (Why, I wonder, didn’t their handlers simply ask mom and dad to stay in Hawaii for a couple of months?) Instead, having been born in Kenya for no purpose other than to complicate what would have been a rather straightforward plan to take over the world, the boy was quickly shuttled back to Hawaii, where the boy’s grandparents resided. (The plan also called for Obama’s grandfather to fight with Patton so as to enhance the future commander-in-chief’s military credentials.)

Then, the plotters planted a bogus notice in the Aug. 13, 1961, issue of the Honolulu Advertiser, announcing the birth of Barack Obama on Aug. 4, 1961. This trail of official records and newspaper accounts would provide the necessary cover for the child’s madrassa training, as he was ushered to Indonesia (or, according to Mike Huckabee, to either Kenya or Indonesia), where he would be schooled in the lessons of the Mau Mau Revolution until such time as he could resume his American mission.

That mission included getting accepted to Harvard Law School, and eventually publishing a best-selling book about (of all things!) his ancestry. And it explains why, on Page 26 of the memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” there is the suspicious passage: “I discovered this article, folded away among my birth certificate and old vaccination forms, when I was in high school.”

Knowing that the young-Kenyan/Indonesian/Hawaiian candidate would begin his quest for the presidency, the conspirators enlisted two more participants in their nefarious scheme: Hawaii’s health director, Chiyome Fukino (a Republican appointed by Republican Gov. Linda Lingle), and its state registrar, Alvin Onaka. Both would personally verify that the health department holds the president’s original birth certificate.

Jess Henig and Joe Miller would be planted into the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where they would declare in 2008 that they had “seen, touched, examined, and photographed the original birth certificate” and that it “meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship.”

The conspiracy would include spies within the GOP who would guarantee that the 2008 Republican nominee would be born outside the United States, and understandably be unwilling to make “natural born” citizenship an issue.

The final assist would be provided by two surprise coconspirators, President George W. Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who would preside over an eleventh-hour financial meltdown. The economy in ruins, the desperate nation would welcome this strange outsider.

Mission accomplished.

By Michael Smerconish

Michael Smerconish writes a weekly column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. ― Ed.

(The Philadelphia Inquirer)

(McClatchy-Tribune Information Services)