Hmm. First thought: Didn’t Obama just elevate Donald Trump? The release of the long-form birth certificate gave Trump a chance to boast he got results, that this is all he wanted all along, etc.. He gets national TV time to pivot to his next attack. Makes him more than ever the anti-Obama in the press. Second thought: Maybe Obama wanted to elevate Trump. It would mess up the GOP primaries something good if Trump ran. He’s already sucking attention from more “legitimate” but little-known candidates, making the GOP look wacky, etc. Trump’s someone Obama can beat. Third thought: Damn, bloggers have already beaten me to Second Thought. Fourth thought: Maybe Second Thought is overthinking, as one Twitterer charges. Usually the simplest and dumbest explanation is the accurate one–Obama didn’t move to release the long form earlier because he didn’t see any need to do so. It wasn’t hurting him. He released it now because he really is bugged by all the distraction and (as Jonathan Alter says) is enough of a serious good government type to actually want to focus on the budget debate, which he presumably thinks will help him. Fifth thought: If Obama isn’t overthinking things like this, shouldn’t he have somebody on his staff who is? Also, it’s been a consistent Obamaite strategy to nominate unelectable Republicans–e.g. Rush Limbaugh–as leaders of the opposition. Elevating Trump does fit in with that strategy, which is not an overly brilliant one. …
P.S.: Even if Obama was attempting the “genius” Trump-pumping triple-bank-shot , that doesn’t mean it will work out as planned and help the president. It also looks–to the non-geniueses–like Obama waited two years to spring a trap on the birthers and then pissed it away trying to damage a marginal candidate, in a press appearance that made the president seem as much a righteous, lecturing whiner (“I’ve got better stuff to do”) as a policy-driven grown up. Is Obama saying he wouldn’t be losing an unnecessary war in Libya if only he’d had more quiet time to think it through? …