Obama Feeds the Birthers

What’s this? Oh, look, it’s President Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate and you can see it in all its fraudulent glory here. Will this put an end to “birtherism”? How can it since birtherism is impervious to reality? Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director, argues:

At a time of great consequence for this country – when we should be debating how we win the future, reduce our deficit, deal with high gas prices, and bring stability to the Middle East, Washington, DC, was once again distracted by a fake issue.  The President’s hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country.

Pull the other one. Who benefits from the latest Trump-fed outbreak of birtherism? Not the Republican party, that’s for sure. On the contrary it suits the White House – for all the reasons Pfeiffer outlines – to have at least one branch of the conservative opposition obsessed by this piffle. Far from putting an end to the matter, producing the long-form birth certificate (at last!) can only feed the frenzy. The more some conservatives talk about this the less they’re talking about the “bigger issues that matter” and the more their derangement tarnishes the wider conservative movement. Donald Trump is a fifth columnist.

That doesn’t help the opposition or, perhaps, America. But it does help an administration preparing its re-election campaign. Mike Allen, Politico’s indefatigable finest, tweets that a “top Democrat” tells him that the Trump stuff was doing damage: “The Swift Boaters taught us that a lie can take hold and do real damage”. Come off it. The problem John Kerry faced with the Swift Boaters was that, whether their attacks had any truth to them or not, they buttressed a pre-existing argument that Kerry was less reliable than he seemed and prone to shifting his positions with the wind. Moreoever, since Kerry had made a point of placing his military record at the heart of his campaign identity (“Reporting for Duty!”) the Swift Boaters were, in a sense, also challenging a central part of the Kerry “narrative”.

The Birther campaign is in a different category, one more like the 9/11 Truthers insisting that Bush (or Cheney!) “knew” about the 9/11 attacks and were somehow implicated in them. Like Trutherism, Birtherism is a product of paranoia but the only people who benefit from it are Democrats and, most of all, the President himself.

Releasing this certificate can’t satisfy the unsatisfiable; all it can do is help tarnish the President’s opponents. Doubtless this is a cynical interpretation but so what? Sometimes cynicism is justified. Cui Bono? Obama, that’s who. The more interesting question, then, is why release it now*? Maybe the President is simply tired of the nonsense and irritated by it but when your opponents are busy making fools of themselves it’s sensible to help them on their way even if you also find the distraction tedious.

*Becase they only received the certificate “last night” apparently.

UPDATE: See Dave Weigel for more. Also Chris Good.And I agree with Jonathan Bernstein:

Now, I wake up, and find that Chuck Todd is calling today “a sad day in American political history” and Adam Serwer is saying “this marks a level of personal humiliation no previous president has ever been asked to endure,” and my reaction is mostly…jeez, this kind of stuff happens, just move on to the next thing. A sad day in American political history? More like a silly day. Sad is when our pols make terrible decisions with terrible consequences; this is just a bit of fun.