Obama: Minutes after President Obama finished his birth certificate press conference, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tweeted out: “Hope everyone saw POTUS talk about how sideshows are distracting us from the real issues we need to confront as a nation.” To which ABC News’ Jake Tapper responded: “I did, and now instead of doing a story about Panetta/Petreaus, I’ll be covering the birther nonsense! wait, what?”

The White House could have chosen any day to release Obama’s birth certificate. It would have been perfect for one of their patented Friday news dumps. Instead, they chose the exact same day news broke about the largest national security shakeup of the Obama administration. Gen. David Petraeus to head up the CIA and Leon Panetta will be named Secretary of Defense. Absent the birther dump, the White House would have been fielding question’s about what these moves mean for the wars in Afghanistan and Libya, as well as for defense spending. Instead, Obama got to wag his finger and escape Washington without any questions so he could go hang out with Oprah.