"We've got enormous challenges ahead of us," Obama said. "We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers."
Obama's choice to personally involve himself in a controversy that, until recently, was driven by fringe websites and talk-radio rants grew out of a moment two weeks earlier, aides said. He had delivered a speech about the budget. But as he watched the television coverage, he found pundits talking about something else: where he was born.
"Finally, it was painfully obvious to him and to all of us," said one senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The debate was starting to be crowded out by this lunacy."
The so-called long-form certificate had become the central issue for many of the so-called birthers, and for real estate tycoon Donald Trump, who is mulling a presidential bid and had said it was possible Obama was pulling "one of the great cons in the history of politics."
Hawaii uses a "short form" as a certified, official birth certificate, and Obama had to ask for a waiver to get the longer form released. That showed what the short firm did: He was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in a Honolulu hospital.
White House strategists say they can impress independent voters by portraying Obama as dealing with serious issues and by painting his critics - and by implication his potential Republican challengers - as people obsessed with a conspiracy theory.
"We live in a serious time right now, and we have the potential to deal with the issues that we confront in a way that will make our kids and our grandkids and our great-grandkids proud," Obama said, chiding the media in the room as much as speaking to the public. "But we're going to have to get serious to do it."
