Is there something about the military which causes people to make things up? Ben Carson now stands at the latest accusing of doing just that, per a Politico article which claims the Carson campaign has “admitted… that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated.”
Unfortunately, this is one of those stories where nobody comes out looking good: Carson indeed made a false claim about the military, but in their giddy enthusiasm to slam him for it (and claim credit for doing so), Politico ended up with a confused exaggeration of a story.
In Gifted Hands, Carson writes of having dinner with Gen. William Westmoreland as a high school member of the junior ROTC as part of a Memorial Day celebration. He then says the following:
“Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
Ben Carson was not offered a scholarship to West Point because there is no such thing as a scholarship to West Point. Tuition, room and board, and expenses are all free. In fact, Gen. Westmoreland wasn’t even there with Carson that evening. Thanks to the ridiculously detailed documentation of a 4-star general’s schedule, we know he was playing tennis in DC during the evening in question.
So Carson was wrong. But this is where the problems end for Carson and begin for Politico. This passing mention of a dinner and scholarship offer can hardly be called “a central point” in Carson’s biography, the focus of which has always been his impoverished upbringing and the indisputably accomplished medical career which followed. Calling this claim “central” is just an awkward way to exaggerate the importance of Politico’s so-called scoop.
Even worse is how the Politico story goes out of its way to hide the ball – you don’t see the sentence or paragraph containing Carson’s actual claim (the line quoted above) until at least a dozen paragraphs into the story. If you did, you would quickly have the necessary context to realize how relatively minor it is. Can’t have that, can we?
Instead you get endless blather from Politico about how Carson never applied to or was admitted into West Point. The idea here seems to be that these are implicitly claims made by Carson in declaring that a scholarship offer was made. But as any college football fan can tell you, a promising high schooler doesn’t have to apply for anything to get multiple scholarship offers. Yet Politico gleefully touts this as a core part of the nefarious “fabrication,” a word which implies a lot more effort on Carson’s part than Politico actually documents in their story.
So should we hold Carson responsible for sloppy fact-checking? On some level, yes – while the book containing this scholarship claim was first published 25 years ago, before Carson was anything even vaguely resembling a politician, it was repeated again in a 2015 book he wrote for teenagers called “You Have a Brain.” You shouldn’t claim to get things you didn’t get. Details matter, especially for someone claiming the ability to handle being president.
But if this is an indicator of sloppiness, it is not what Politico so clearly wants to portray it as – evidence of someone exaggerating their connection to the military in order to boost their political standing.
Not that we’d ever see that happen in politics…
