Racist Birther Debacle a ‘Low Moment’ for US

President Obama “stared deep into political irrationality” yesterday and offered up his long-form birth certificate—in what the New York Times calls “a profoundly low and debasing moment in American political life” in an editorial today. Here was a president who, more than halfway through his term and with far weightier matters to attend to, felt he had to prove his citizenship, in answer to “a baseless attack with heavy racial undertones.”

“It is inconceivable that this campaign to portray Mr. Obama as the insidious ‘other’ would have been conducted against a white president,” the Times declares. Yet Republicans like Sarah Palin and John Boehner intentionally fueled the controversy—and the party paid the price, getting saddled with “a cartoon candidate” in Donald Trump. Releasing the certificate should marginalize him and his ilk, even if they refuse to go away. But “it is tragic that American politics is fueled by such poisonous fire.” (More birther stories.)