Birther is the term used to designate a wingnut conspiracist who believes that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States as his Hawaiian birth certificate indicates, and was therefore ineligible to be President of the United States under the U.S. Constitution. The mini-movement drew its strength validating the feeling among conservatives that Barack Obama was a usurper. As such it is a way to deal with the emotional pain of having lost the 2008 presidential election and thus failing to achieve conservative policy goals. Birthers were, unsurprisingly, uninterested in John McCain's birth in the Panama Canal Zone, a non-territory which was never sovereign U.S. territory under the 1903 Treaty that established U.S. control.