Excerpt on Birthers
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Another event that happened today -- the president of the United States went and made an important announcement about his birth certificate. Was he right to do that? Why did he do that? Was he right to do that? What was going on?
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: He was right to do it.
And let's be fair and blunt. Donald Trump made him do it. And the president had to do it. He had to do it. I think all one has to remember is something that happened in this country seven years ago called the John Kerry campaign. And we had the swift-boating, which became a verb, adjourned, of Kerry failing to respond and react to the charges.
This was growing. And the concern among Democrats was that, among independents, there was sort of a growing sense of this unrebutted. An unrebutted charge somehow gains traction in our poisoned political atmosphere.
And I think the president had to do it. Ideally, politically, you would wait until that magic moment when are you on the same stage with whoever the person was who was either tolerating the charge or making the charge, and present it in "Perry Mason" fashion to them.
But I think they felt they had to. And it was interfering with his conversation and talking about issues that he feels are important to the country and to his own re-election.
JEFFREY BROWN: What do you think? Were there -- he waited awhile. Were there risks in doing it? Does it elevate Donald Trump?
DAVID BROOK, New York Times columnist: Yes. I would have released the document. I would probably have released it months and months ago, but I would have released the document maybe without the presidential press conference.
Clearly, the document will -- for all rational people, will settle it. It will not really settle it, but for most people, it will settle it, and so we can move on. Whether I would have had the president go out there, have a split-screen with Donald Trump, step on the big news of David Petraeus and Leon Panetta getting appointments, and whether I would have him complain about the Washington debate -- and this is something that I know consumes a lot of his mind, the aggravation with the debate in Washington.
And, sometimes, it is aggravating. I just think it's rarely a good thing for the president to complain about the debate, complain about the media. You control a lot of the agenda. Just move on. Talk about the serious stuff. So, I would have released the document without a lot of the...
JEFFREY BROWN: For the same reasons, for the swift boat fears?
DAVID BROOKS: Right. Exactly. I mean, it was -- it gained traction with an amazing number of Americans, despite any evidence. And conspiracy theories and oddball theories have a strange purchase on the human mind.
JEFFREY BROWN: But do you think it's done now? Is it buried?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, it's done -- David is right -- for the rational majority in the country.
Let's be very blunt about this. This never was -- it never had a factual premise to it. There was a delegitimizing effort about the Obama presidency. They couldn't do it on the basis of the election. He won overwhelmingly in the Electoral College and popular. There are no sexual escapades, a la Clinton, that they can brand him with and accuse him of illegitimacy.
There is no Whitewater financial dealings they have been able to find. I mean, if Barack Obama's father had been born in New Zealand, this never would have happened. I mean, let's be very frank about that. I mean, the fact that he was born an African, his father and -- was an African, I think, is part, parcel and central to this whole story. And nobody...
JEFFREY BROWN: Do you mean race or do you mean African...
MARK SHIELDS: I mean race and Africa -- Africa and race synonymously.
And I don't think there is any question. That is the only place at which they could sort of attack or make an attack. I mean, Mike Huckabee, to his everlasting credit, the former Arkansas governor, whenever he's confronted on this by one of these fire-eaters, says -- he said, do you think if this were true that Bill and Hillary Clinton wouldn't have found out about it in 2008?
And it's so irrational.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I also -- I agree with that, though it's also there is a culture of a knockout blow. There is a dream that we're going to find something on each president that will knock them out.
And it's never a policy thing. We will knock them out with a scandal. We will knock them out with this. And so people hunger for that one magic switch which will make their political opponents go away. They're not going away.
Notice to Birthers: President Obama is NOT going away! Not even in 2012.
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