ADELE FERGUSON - June 10, 2010

A lesson for political candidates

WELL, HERE comes another one.

The Republican candidate for President Obama’s old Senate seat has admitted to inaccurately claiming he received the U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Officer of the Year award for his service during NATO’s conflict with Serbia in the late 1990s.

Translation: U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Navy reservist elected to Congress in 2001, lied about an honor for outstanding service that went to his unit and not him individually.

Source: A story by the Washington Post in the Seattle Times.

The “error” appeared in Kirk’s official biography in use in his campaign for the Illinois Senate race, which he has now changed to incorporate a different explanation of the award. He was exposed by a staffer in the office of the Illinois state Treasurer, who is Kirk’s opponent in the race.

I’VE TOLD YOU before that if you run for office these days, expect your opponent to pay for an investigation into your past clear through kindergarten, looking for anything that could force you to back out of the race for fear of exposure or cost you the election when the voters find out.

Kirk’s explanation, “upon a recent review of my records, I found that an award listed in my official biography was misidentified.” He’s a little late reviewing his records, since he testified at a House committee hearing in March. 2002, “I was the Navy’s Intelligence Officer of the Year.” He claimed that distinction then as proof he was specially qualified to discuss national security spending.

He didn’t dare, I guess, borrow the excuse used by Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic candidate for Senator Christopher Dodd’s seat, as to why he claimed he had served in Vietnam when he had not, i.e., he’d used “a few misplaced words.” He meant to say he had served “during” the Vietnam War, he said. He was in the Marine Reserve but failed to mention that he got at least five deferments to keep from ever going over there.

BOTH OF THESE would-be senators have learned the hard way that you can lie about a lot of things, womanizing, drug use, traffic accident records, and you’ll be forgiven or let off the hook by the vast number of your constituents who’ve committed the same sins. But don’t lie about your service record. Uncle Sam keeps records on the folks who wear its uniforms and does not take exaggeration or outright lying lightly. Neither do the people for whom they fight.

There was so much of this after the Vietnam War by men who used phony hero resumes to avoid getting the abuse Vietnam vets suffered from a public opposed to the war, that a military researcher named B.G. Burkett spent 10 years checking such stories in the archives and coming up with a book, “Stolen Valor.” Some national political leaders were exposed and some went to jail for receiving money they had not earned.

Blumenthal, Attorney General of Connecticut for the last 20 years, has irked more than a few people to the point both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have written about actions he has taken as AG that damaged his credibility. That’s from big stuff like bullying small businesses to claiming in his political resume that he had been captain of the Harvard swim team, which he had not.

A retired FBI agent who used to investigate military impostors said, “They all do it for the prestige. They all want to be recognized. They need that ego boost.”