Ben Carson campaign inevitably headed downhill?

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Nov 25, 2015 - 9:16:03 AM

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson. Photo: MGN Online

WASHINGTON - While it has always been very, very unlikely that Dr. Ben Carson would win the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination, and even less likely that he could ever win the presidency, the wheels may have begun to come off the Carson campaign bus, as a series of gaffes and apparent untruths undermined the retired neurosurgeon’s most appealing quality—his trustworthiness.

Some of his advisers also say he is struggling to grasp the complexities of foreign policy, this according to a close confidant, The New York Times reported recently.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, center, at the FOX Business Network & Wall Street Journal GOP Debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Nov. 11, 2015 Photo: MGN Online

The newspaper quoted one Carson advisers as saying the retired neurosurgeon, who is making his first run for public office, is having trouble understanding foreign policy despite intense briefings on the subject.

“Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” Duane R. Clarridge, a former CIA official, told the newspaper. Mr. Clarridge added that Mr. Carson needs weekly conference calls to brief him on foreign policy, so “we can make him smart.”

The Carson campaign reacted swiftly to the Times story, casting Mr. Clarridge in a statement as “an elderly gentleman” who isn’t part of Dr. Carson’s inner circle. “He is coming to the end of a long career of serving our country. Mr. Clarridge’s input to Dr. Carson is appreciated, but he is clearly not one of Dr. Carson’s top advisers,” said campaign spokesman Doug Watts.

Television station owner and conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, who has no official role with the Carson campaign, but who talks regularly to the candidate, acknowledged in an interview with The Associated Press that other advisers beyond Mr. Clarridge are distressed at the pace of Dr. Carson’s progress.

Mr. Williams estimates Dr. Carson has been spending “40 percent of his time” in foreign policy briefings in recent weeks. The extra study expressed itself in a sophomoric op-ed article in The Washington Post Nov. 19, in which he explained “My plan to defeat the Islamic State.”

To lead the fight he wrote: “the United States must dramatically increase its efforts to appeal directly to the moderate Kurds, Syrians and Iraqis. We must convince them that the Islamic State poses a fundamental threat to their existence. And we must equip them with the means to convey that message to their people.”

In order to counter the estimated 100,000 social media messages the Islamic State sends out each day in at least four languages—English, French, Arabic, and Russian—Dr. Carson proposed: “a multi-pronged communications strategy that leverages our strengths in media production and messaging, combined with cutting off traditional access routes to social media for radical Islamist groups.”

None of the ideas are new, groundbreaking nor insightful.

Dr. Carson’s critics have questioned his connection to Mannatech Inc., which claims its products cure autism and cancer.

Just three months from the first real primary electoral tests in Iowa and New Hampshire, and one year from the 2016 General Election, Dr. Carson, who stands high among GOP candidates, either first or a strong second in virtually every national poll, and extremely high approval ratings leaving him almost universally admired by GOP voters across the board, but his greatest asset, his trustworthiness came into question.

His “rags-to-riches,” story of pulling himself up by his own bootstraps began to unravel as journalists found inconsistencies in his accounts of some of his exploits, as well as glaring factual errors in his interpretation of established historical events.

In one instance Dr. Carson posted to his Facebook wall: “Several people ask what they should tell their friends when people say ‘I like Carson but he has no political experience.’

“You are absolutely right—I have no political experience. The current Members of Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we sure political experience is what we need (?) Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience. What they had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God,” the statement said.

Less than 24 hours later, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal published fact-check articles revealing that a majority, “at least 27” of the 51 signers of the Declaration of Independence had previous elected office experience.

In another stunning account concerning the ancient Pyramids in Egypt, Dr. Carson told CBS News recently: “It is still my belief,” that what he said during a 1998 speech at Andrews University is correct. “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.”

Egyptologists scoff at Dr. Carson’s interpretation of the pyramids as anything but tombs. “The suggestion by Mr. (sic) Carson is not a new suggestion about the pyramids but it simply represents a remarkable lapse of education,” said Robert Ritner, a professor of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, according to published reports. The pyramids, which date to 2500 B.C., have been known since ancient times to be the pharaohs’ tombs. “This was common knowledge to Egyptians and outsiders,” said Prof. Ritner.

In another instance, the Carson camp remained on the defensive days after the third GOP candidates debate in which the candidate said that he “didn’t have any involvement” with a medical supplement company that paid travel and lodging expenses for him to narrate a documentary about the product.

Dr. Carson dismissed a CNBC debate moderator’s question about his connection to Mannatech Inc., which claims its products cure autism and cancer and settled a false advertising lawsuit in Texas for $7 million, as “propaganda.” But National Review’s Jim Geraghty, who earlier this year reported on Mr. Carson’s ties to the firm, called the retired neurosurgeon’s defense a bunch of “bald-faced lies.” The Carson team insisted that there was “a gentleman’s agreement,” but no contract with him for his work on the project, and that he received no compensation for his role in the film.

In another widely reported gaffe, the Carson campaign admitted, in a response to an inquiry from POLITICO, that a central point in his inspirational personal story was fabricated: his juvenile delinquency, which evolved into an offer of a “full scholarship” to attend U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

The academy has occupied a central place in Dr. Carson’s tale for years. According to a story told in Mr. Carson’s book, “Gifted Hands,” the then-17-yearold marched in the 1969 Detroit Memorial Day parade. “I felt so proud, my chest bursting with ribbons and braids of every kind. To make it more wonderful, we had important visitors that day. Two soldiers who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Viet Nam were present,” he wrote in the book.

“More exciting to me, General William Westmoreland (very prominent in the Viet Nam war) attended with an impressive entourage. Afterward, Sgt. Hunt— his high school ROTC director— “introduced me to General Westmoreland, and I had dinner with him and the Congressional Medal winners. Later I was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”

Again, in his 2015 autobiography “You Have a Brain,” geared toward teenagers, Dr. Carson recalled his prominent ROTC leadership role. “That position allowed me the chance to meet four-star general William Westmoreland, who had commanded all American forces in Vietnam before being promoted to Army Chief of Staff at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,” he wrote. “I also represented the Junior ROTC at a dinner for Congressional Medal of Honor winners, marched at the front of Detroit’s Memorial Day parade as head of an ROTC contingent, and was offered a full scholarship to West Point.”

Dr. Carson has said he turned down the supposed offer of admission because he knew he wanted to be a doctor and attending West Point would have required four years of military service after graduation.

But according to records of Gen. Westmoreland’s schedule that were provided by the U.S. Army, Politico reported, the general did not visit Detroit around Memorial Day in 1969 or have dinner with young Carson. In fact, the general’s records suggest he was in Washington that day. Second, West Point has no record of Dr. Carson ever applying for admission; and finally, there is no tuition or other costs for any cadets attending the academy.

All students admitted to West Point, the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Boulder, Co. And the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut receive “full scholarships,” so to speak covering tuition and room and board, in exchange for a four-year obligation to serve as commissioned officers in the armed forces.

When presented with this evidence, Mr. Carson’s campaign conceded the story was false. “Dr. Carson was the top ROTC student in the City of Detroit,” campaign manager Barry Bennett wrote in an email to POLITICO. “In that role he was invited to meet General Westmoreland. He believes it was at a banquet. He can’t remember with specificity their brief conversation but it centered around Dr. Carson’s performance as ROTC City Executive Officer.”

Dr. Carson dismissed the interest in the details of his West Point experience as a conspiracy to destroy him. The damage however hits at the core of his appeal. The conventional wisdom is that Dr. Carson is beloved for being a soft-spoken personality and a non-politician with a very distinguished biography. That plays into the fact that he is a Black man, and Republicans who have long resented the accusations of racism and White identity politics, see in Dr. Carson a Black candidate who is as conservative as the GOP base.

The irony is that his Blackness and his conservatism quietly undermine his likelihood of winning the nomination and his potential electability. “First of all he would be a disaster as a candidate,” veteran political analyst and statistician Dr. David Bositis told The Final Call. “The Republican elite would never allow him to be the nominee,” unless, that is, the GOP was ready to concede that no Republican could possibly win the presidency in 2016.

Under those circumstances Dr. Bositis said, “I would be willing to concede that maybe Ben Carson (could) get the nomination. But that’s the only way it would happen. The establishment is seriously looking at (Sen.) Marco Rubio (R-Fla.),” as its nominee he said.

President Obama was elected with only 30 percent of the White vote in his favor, but, “Obama got 95 percent of the Black vote. Carson would get, at best 15 percent of the Black vote,” more Black votes than any GOP candidate has received in modern history, but not nearly enough to offset the Democrats, and diehard Whites who would never vote for a Black nominee. Mathematically, Dr. Carson cannot win in the general election, Dr. Bositis said.

Dr. Carson’s other liability is the harm his candidacy could do to the down-ballot candidates, especially U.S. Senate races, where in 2016 there are far more vulnerable Republicans up for reelection—just as in 2014 there were several more vulnerable Democratic seats up for grabs. A poor performing GOP presidential nominee could guarantee the loss of the Republican majority in the Senate.

The Final Call