Jimmy Carson?

Let me part company with my blogging partner regarding Ben Carson.
First, I'm not sure anyone but we conservatives partisans are paying attention to the Carson story. Second, I certainly don't think it's a threat to his political future and third when someone writes a book he is responsible for its content.
To the first point, there is news and then there is real news. Will anyone in the Iowa caucuses remember or care why Dr. Carson did not go to West Point? Politicians do stupid thing when they are trying to sell books such as telling people they left the White House destitute but most of that foolishness quickly drifts to the back of the public's consciousness. A few of us partisans do remember Obama's 57 states blunder and there was considerable coverage of his "words-just words" plagiarism of Deval Patrick but most voters forgot. Yes, charges of plagiarism did sink Biden's presidential hopes in 1988 but until someone shows me a picture of young Dr. Carson with Donna Rice sitting on his lap I do not see this story going very far.
Mitt Romney was hurt by stories not germane to his career such as giving someone a haircut and strapping his dog to the roof of his car but the governor elect of Kentucky was caught at a cock fight less than a year ago. The assertion that he was brain washed killed the presidential chances of the senior Romney but who remembered the lust in Jimmy Carter's heart and his idiotic Playboy interview on election day? Usually, but not always, voters tune out the media static.
To the third point, where the hell is Ben Carson's head? Yes, he is a nice guy and a brain surgeon but Jimmy Carter was also a nice guy and a nuclear physicist and increasingly when I hear Ben Carson's voice I see images of Jimmy Carter. Yes, Carson is bright and likeable but that does not excuse him from the obligation to hire good editors. Carson is the only person I have ever heard use the term "full scholarship" in conjunction with West Point. Cadets secure congressional appointments to military academies. No one pays tuition. I have no doubt that a recommendation from General William Westmoreland to Carson's congressman at that time, John Dingell would have got the job done but why could not Carson have written that?
Carson's life and career are remarkable enough but he seems compelled to embellish it with melodrama. Maybe he did have a Saul to Paul conversion when he locked himself in the bathroom to pray and maybe his conscious is more demanding than ours and he sees his past as evil when the rest of us would see it as pretty good for a teenager. By all accounts he was conspicuously polite and academically gifted and if that is the worse that can be said about him must we deal with his redemption? If he must peddle this redemption narrative why can't he cop to smoking marijuana like Jeb Bush rather than telling us he almost stabbed someone who doesn't want to back up his story. In short I blame Carson not Politico for any damage this event has done to his candidacy.