The Birth Certificate

Richard Fernandez gets to the core of the controversy: 

The reason people have been looking for the birth certificate isn’t because they mistrust official birth certificates in general. It is because they mistrust Obama.

He uses the analogy of the dollar bill. When we are handed a dollar, we don't hold it up to the light or examine it closely to see if it's fake. We trust the fact the it's a genuine bill unless we are given a reason to doubt its authenticity. That's been the problem with the Obama birth certificate. It's not that we doubt birth certificates in general, we doubt the honesty of Obama in particular. It's also why there will be questions about this college grades and the claims that have been made for his brilliance. There have been no obvious manifestations of brilliance during his performance in office which leads people to wonder what his sealed grades and other personal information from his past actually contains.

Calling Trump the "Forlorn Hope," a group of men who are willing to make a suicide attack against an entrenched enemy,

But the Forlorn Hope has done his job. Trump has astutely observed that he has nothing left to lose. Donald is therefore going to say: “Since you’ve released the birth certificate, why not the school records?” The Donald’s biggest advantage is that unlike most of us, he has no fear embarrassment. Like a freak, Trump makes money from exhibitionism. He doesn’t mind being laughed at. That just boosts the ratings.

The reason that Obama released his birth certificate was that Trump's suicide charge raised the issue to the point where, like people do when there's lots of counterfeit money in circulation, people start to examine the bills they're handed.  And the image of Obama's long form birth certificate is not going to make the issue of trust in Obama go away.   The perception is out there, despite the attempts of the media to make it look otherwise, that there is literally nothing about Obama that can be trusted.  The demand for ever more of Obama's sealed history will reside in the minds of the electorate, and will show up in votes at the ballot box.