NOVEMBER 10, 2015
GOP front-runner Dr. Ben Carson has had a pretty tough week.
Last week, the internet site Buzzfeed unearthed a 1998 commencement speech by Carson in which he asserted his belief that the Egyptian pyramids were not built as a tomb for the pharaohs but was instead built by the Biblical Joseph as a place to store grain. Pay no attention to the fact that Old Testament Joseph lived 500 years before the pyramids were determined to be built or that the Egyptians of the time actually documented the reasons why the pyramids were built.
His wild theory just added to the image of ole Ben being just a bit nutty and would have probably blown over. Then came Friday.
Internet site Politico filed a story challenging Carson’s claim in several of his books and many of his speeches that he was “offered a full scholarship to West Point” but that he turned it down to pursue a medical career. When interviewed, West Point officials asserted that they have no record of extending any such offer to Carson, because in order to extend an offer of admission, a candidate would have to apply, undergo a strenuous physical and be recommended by a member of Congress, none of which was done by Carson.
For his part, Carson explained that in 1969, because of his exemplary ROTC record, he was invited to a dinner with Gen. William Westmoreland, where military representatives told him that he would have no trouble getting into West Point. In Carson’s mind, that meant he was offered a full scholarship. Media skepticism was immediate, and the campaign knew that they had a problem, because Carson’s campaign is built on his resume, and if there’s one crack in the base, the whole structure might come down. So on that Friday night, they decided on a bold move. They sent Ben Carson out to meet the press.
Uh-oh. I might be wrong, but I’m not sure that Dr. Carson had ever faced anyone who ever questioned his life story. Reporters began to examine other parts of Carson’s story, and matters soon got very testy. They questioned his insistence that when he was 14, he stabbed a friend (later amended to be a family member, like that makes it better) but the blade was stopped by the victim’s belt buckle; his assurance that he shielded his white high-school classmates during the Martin Luther King riots, and his assertion that when a Yale professor tried to trick his class, Carson was the only one not to fall for it and was awarded $10 as the most honest student. Carson has been dining out on these stories for two decades, and any threat to his biography would jeopardize that.
Instead of shielding Carson from the press after Friday’s debacle, his staff allowed him to be interviewed on Saturday by NBC’s Chris Jansing, to whom Carson volunteered his contention that there has never been a Presidential candidate who has ever suffered as much scrutiny as Ben Carson. (Apparently he was in a coma during the Jeremiah Wright saga in 2007.) When Jansing gave him an out citing Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s lengthy travails, Carson shook his head and said “Not even close.”
With that, his rivals, who had initially circled the wagons to support Carson’s charges of media bias, had had enough and began to turn on the good doctor. Chris Christie, who has been scrutinized through Bridgegate, observed, “A couple of days of being asked about something that you put in your books? I got to tell you, I don’t have a lot of sympathy,” while Mike Huckabee warned Carson, “Pal, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Going into tonight’s GOP debate, many pundits have worried that these revelations will jeopardize Carson’s chance of making it to the White House. Perhaps, but I don’t think that this is Carson’s main worry.
I believe that Ben Carson is not running to become President.
I believe that Ben Carson is running only in order to build his brand.
Can anyone tell me with a straight face that Carson’s dream is to wrestle with the crisis in Syria or to negotiate with Mitch McConnell? Does he really want to be Commander in Chief of the armed forces? I doubt it.
Ben Carson has built an empire built on the life of Ben Carson — 10 books, a TV movie of his life (with Cuba Gooding Jr.!), significant speaking fees and a sterling reputation among evangelicals and medical professionals alike. A Presidential run could only grow his audience and therefore his business. That is, unless the biography gets tarnished, thus damaging the product.
That’s why this week panicked the Ben Carson camp. Yes, it was important to shield the Carson campaign from further damage. But it was much more important to protect the empire, Dr. Ben Carson, Inc.
