Rand Paul’s resume dishonesty is not in the same league with Richard Blumenthal claiming Vietnam service that wasn’t. It is closer in unethical heft to Illinois Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk’s representation of a group military award as in individual one on his resume. Still, if candidates for national office show a penchant for dishonesty and deceit before they are elected, what can we expect later, when they have the keys to the candy store and genuine power?
To make a ridiculously complicated story simple, Paul, who is the Republican candidate for Jim Bunning’s Senate seat in Kentucky, has long claimed to be a “board certified” ophthalmologist, but a reporter for the Louisville Currier Journal discovered he was not—at least, not in the way a casual observer would assume. The board that certified Paul was his own board, created and headed by Paul himself and it is not recognized by the American Medical Association. Paul’s certification by a recognized board lapsed five years ago.
This makes his claim of being currently “board certified” technically true but misleading—the definition of deceit. In a similar vein, he could also have claimed to be a “board certified” ophthalmologist if he was a certified personal trainer who happened to also be an ophthalmologist.
Paul has issued a long and involved explanation for why his decision to reject traditional certification was principled, but it doesn’t explain the deceit. By the standards of the vast majority of the medical profession, Paul wasn’t “board certified,” and knew it. He intentionally misrepresented his credentials.
Ethics Alarms 
THIS is why I’ve always said that libertarians should run as candidates of their own existing party. Instead (and like his father, a GOP Congressman… and onetime Libertarian Party presidential candidate) Rand Paul chose to run as a conservative Republican with Tea Party support. His candidacy, thereby, was deceitful from the beginning. And it’s why the RNC backed his challenger in the primary. Their wisdom in this is now apparent. Deceit in one facet only leads to others. It’s a question of character.
We used to rely on newspapers and news magazines to vet people running for office; now they are all so tainted by their political bents that we can’t depend on them. Ditto the TV news networks. Ditto the blogs.
So how do we get the real background information on people running for office or in positions of power? In bits and pieces through the Internet, and even the tabloids, who are more and more often proved to be correct.
It is a scary world out there. Public relations is a billion dollar business, and until or unless the intrepid individual decides to do his/her job as a reporter (or even paparazzo) we don’t find the truth.
So we believe no one. And Obama tops the list.
Too bad.
We should never grant total belief to any stranger. Particularly those who have a personal interest in forwarding a single viewpoint. It’s best to limit one’s information intake to those sites and persons who have proved accurate in the past, then do a cross analysis of their collective reporting. As the tradition sources become ever more controlled and insular, they likewise became more unreliable. The internet has given us a “townhall” forum that hearkens back to the days when a major city might have a dozen or so newspapers. It just requires some discernment with the citizen reader. But that’s what a free society is all about!