This morning President Obama released his long-form birth certificate. The President said that "he decided on the release because the conspiracy theory over where he was born had eclipsed the debate on the budget." And I agree with him.
I see two problems with this whole silliness.
First, is that it took him so long to do it. I mean the requirements are fairly straightforward to be the President of the United States; No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President...(Article II Section I). So if your qualifications are ever in question I would think it simple enough to provide the appropriate documentation and move on.
And this gets to my second problem with this issue; the conspiracy theorists would not let this issue die. In the vacuum of formal proof, which has just now been provided, the birther issue got legs and kept running much longer that it ever should. And I think you see Obama's frustration with this non-issue in his statement today "I've got better stuff to do," referring to the budget issues.
Obama miscalculated how distracting this issue would become. People in their desperation (that doesn't seem like quite the right word though) to discredit him grasped on to this issue of all things. And to me the frustrating thing is that we're talking about a birth certificate here, not the budget, not the wars, not education, not ...name literally ANY other issue. It's just silly.
And now, because it's so curious to me, the side-bar to this story - Donald Trump.
If you read Obama's statement this morning it's full of awesome one-liners that as a guy who dabbles in campaigns like me just eats up. My favorite; "while the parties debate their fiscal policies, people can’t be 'making stuff up' and providing 'sideshows and carnival barkers.”
Sideshows. Carnival Barkers. Awesome. And really, is there any better way to describe Donald Trump right now?
There is an interesting article in the Union Leader that sums up my feelings of Donald Trump fairly well; see it here. In the article the author sites a Trump appearance on the Bill O'Reilly show where Trump said:
“If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of this time.” To which O’Reilly replied: “It’s provocative. I think it gets a lot of attention, but I don’t think you believe it.”
I think O'Reilly was on to something at the time. Trump knows this issue is not substantive, but it is provocative, and it certainly has got Trump a lot of attention over the last month or so. But in the end, he comes off as a Carnival Barker. Someone who when history looks back at this presidential race will label as a literal sideshow.
And it's happening already; Jimmy Kimmel challenges any serious journalist to interview Trump with a straight face.
It'll be a fun (side)show to watch.
