Obama’s Birth Certificate Rebuttal Changes Game

The fact that President Barack Obama’s felt a need to present his birth certificate in a televised White House appearance Wednesday shows how much the rules have changed when it comes to officials responding to political allegations, Politico reports.

Obama’s strategy shows that any accusations, no matter how unlikely, can gain credence in our modern political discussion. Given the plethora of media outlets, there’s no authority above the fray to filter solid accusations from the weak ones.

“There are no more arbiters of truth,” former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told Politico. “So whatever you can prove factually, somebody else can find something else and point to it with enough ferocity to get people to believe it. We’ve crossed some Rubicon into the unknown.”