In Ben Carson’s bestselling book, Gifted Hands, he recounts a tale about how as a top ROTC student in Detroit growing up he had an opportunity to meet General William Westmoreland. Apparently, the meeting went well. According to Carson, “Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”
Politico followed up and is now reporting that this anecdote is ‘fabricat[ed]“:
West Point, however, has no record of Carson applying, much less being extended admission.
Now, there may be plenty of reasons to say that Carson is embellishing his resume here and he may well deserve criticism for that. My father is a Naval Academy graduate — ’58 is great! — who’s helped other midshipmen get into the school and I know for a fact the appointment process is a formal one. Carson should know better than to cavalierly explain what he was told so vaguely, never mind that everyone who gets into a service academy in effect gets a “full scholarship.” However, it’s also not unthinkable that top brass such as Westmoreland could have essentially promised Carson an appointment, and his help could have gone a long way toward making it automatic.
But Politico’s characterization of what Carson said is unfair. Where did Carson say he applied or was accepted to West Point? As far as I can tell, Carson only says he was offered an appointment to West Point. In a Facebook post in August, Carson further muddies things by saying he “got an offer from West Point.” (Perhaps Carson further embellished this anecdote elsewhere? If he did, Politico’s not citing it.) But all this is still very vague and it’s awfully unfair for Politico to extrapolate that Carson’s lying about applying and being accepted. In fact, in the Facebook post above Carson specifically says, “So I applied to only one school. (It was all the money I had). I applied to Yale and thank God they accepted me.” Politico also flatly states that “Carson’s campaign conceded the story was false,” but as quoted, the campaign’s response isn’t nearly as definitive as Politico is, again, characterizing it. Indeed, Carson supporters are now telling the Washington Post that Politico is guilty of “shoddy journalism” and that it “fits into Dr. Carson’s narrative of a witch hunt.”
I don’t want to diminish the fact that Carson looks like he’s gilding the lilly here, but it amazes me that Carson gets such harsh treatment from Politico, which promptly ignores any nuance to quickly come down on the side of calling him a liar. Yet, Hillary Clinton’s many and laughable email excuses are always approached with respect by the media.
And for what it’s worth, Carson’s story strikes me as more believable than Hillary Clinton’s claim she tried to join the Marines in 1975.
