RUTHFULLY YOURS

One of the most bizarre presidential election cycles in living memory just got a whole lot weirder

The Trump phenomenon has entered a phase of slow descent for now, paving the way for another outsider candidate to rise. Dr. Ben Carson is almost certainly a man of a more measured temperament and moral fortitude than Trump. Also, unlike Trump, Carson’s accomplishments are due solely to his aptitude, capacity for industry, and intellect. As exemplary men of achievement go, the GOP is far better served by Ben Carson’s rise to the forefront of the pack of Republican presidential candidates than they are by Trump’s ascendancy.

That is not to say that Ben Carson is qualified to serve as President of the United States. He is not. Though he is a lettered and brilliant man, Carson has not demonstrated competency or an understanding of the contours of policy that a modern commander-in-chief must fully grasp. As early as March, Carson was probed by radio host Hugh Hewitt on a range of issues related to foreign affairs. It was then that Americans learned that the pediatric neurosurgeon preferred to view the Middle East’s myriad ethno-geographic conflicts through the lens of Biblical scripture and was unclear on the fact that the Baltic States had been members of the NATO alliance for over a decade. In the months that have passed, the candidate has not boned up on the granular details of policy and process.

This week, Carson was stumped by a question on Cuba policy and confessed that he was unfamiliar with the U.S. asylum policy commonly referred to as “wet foot, dry foot.” That is, when Cuban migrants manage to make it onto U.S. soil, they are provided the opportunity to access expedited refugee status. Carson revealed that he had never heard of that policy. Earlier, he contended that Medicare and Medicaid were plagued by “half a trillion dollars” in losses due to fraud. “If true, that would be almost 50 percent of our total spending on the two programs,” the Washington Post’s James Downie noted. “The real number is somewhere between 3 and 10 percent.”

The day after being sworn in as secretary of State, Hillary Clinton signed a Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Agreement that laid out criminal penalties for “any unauthorized disclosure” of classified information.

With the intelligence inspector general finding several instances of Clinton and her aides sending classified emails over a private, unsecured server, it will be interesting to see how Clinton tries to wiggle out from under this one.

Washington Free Beacon:

Clinton received at least two emails while secretary of state on her personal email server since marked “TS/SCI”—top secret/sensitive compartmented information—according to the U.S. intelligence community’s inspector general.

The State Department said in September that Clinton’s private email system, set up at her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, was not authorized to handle SCI.

The Democratic presidential frontrunner defended her unauthorized possession of SCI and hersending of emails containing classified information by claiming that the information was not marked as classified when it was sent or received.

The opposing waves of response to the Politico story are a reminder that sometimes the truth is somewhere in between. Some are defending Ben Carson from Politico, and most every mainstream news organ is turning him into wood pulp. The truth about his West Point saga might be somewhere in between.

But whatever the truth is, the incident reveals a recurring and perhaps unrecoverable trait of candidate Carson. He just doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about, whether it be Cuba, the Voting Rights Act, or how West Point works.

First, the easy truth. The heart of the Politico story is this line from Carson’s book, courtesy of Dave Weigel’s snippet of it:

Later, I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.

There you have it. Now things get foggy. To a teenage Ben Carson, this might mean he thought he heard some authority figure tell him he should go to West Point and it wouldn’t cost him anything. That figure might be General William Westmoreland. Carson isn’t clear who offered the “scholarship.” But maybe to a young Ben Carson, that’s what he honestly thought was on the table.