As for the matter of fact, I don't know where Obama was born.

You may have just disqualified yourself for a Bayesian...

However, it is interesting that until he went into politics, Obama himself claimed to be born in Kenya.

The link you gave doesn't say "Obama himself claimed to be born in Kenya", it says that Obama's literary agent said Obama was born in Kenya. In fact the very link you gave even offers a further link from an earlier 1990 interview that says clearly "He was born in Hawaii"

So, I'm downvoting this, as even a cursory examination of the links you gave indicate your statement to be inaccurate and misleading.

Frankly, the whole Birther thing reminds of how, back in the day, debates about whether a prince was actually the king's son served as proxies for debates about whether the prince would make a good king.

You are being unreasonably generous to Birthers. If they wanted to discuss Obama's qualifications and abilities then they would be discussing them explicitly. A crown prince has the lawful right to take the throne when the reigning monarch died - one of the few ways to get rid of a bad prince was to have him declared illegitimate. If Obama is a bad president then he can be voted out, no need to invent spurious reasons for his disqualification. Birthers are manufacturing doubt about Obama's birthplace and then demanding balanced coverage of both sides of the story. That's also what you're doing in the last paragraph of your post: "I don't know the truth, but I find it interesting that..." You have all the evidence you need to come to an informed opinion. Balanced coverage would be reporting the fact that he was born in Hawaii and has the birth certificate to prove it.