On Really Padding The Résumé, Or, “Vote For Me! I Died In Viet Nam”

We have already seen some impressive efforts in this campaign season to do a bit of résumé padding, particularly as it regards things military; so far Illinois’ Mark Kirk has managed to turn himself into a kind of camouflage Austin Powers, while Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal’s trying to catch up with some “Vietnam” service of his own that no one else in the theater of operations exactly knew about.

But now, in the race for Alabama Governor, we may have seen something that takes us to a whole new level of “inflation”: the Republican candidate is running an ad that not only suggests that he served in Vietnam…it seems to imply that he actually died there, and has now come back to save the State.

Which is some serious irony indeed, considering that the candidate is actually a medical doctor.

And with that, let me introduce you to the either living…or undead…Dr. Robert J. Bentley.

“I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;
I have done my duty as a man is bound to do;
With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Greenville die!”
And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

--From “The Revenge”, by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Now as regular readers know, I post far and wide, including at Left in Alabama, where our friend mooncat has been running with this story, which is how I became aware of the events we’ll be talking about today.

On Thursday, she was up with a post I particularly want you to see, and I’ll explain why in just a second, but before I do, I just wanted to acknowledge her excellent work.

So here’s the deal: the Bentley for Governor Campaign has been running an ad called “A Man’s Word”, which is one of two ads that give the impression that Bentley served in Vietnam, even though he did not serve there.

In this ad, a list of names appears about six seconds in, and remains visible for about three seconds, along with an image of a fighter aircraft and a banner that says: “Hospital Commander Vietnam War”; a reference to his three-month stint as the interim commander of the base hospital at Pope Air Force Base, in North Carolina.

Here’s the ad, for your perusal:



Now if you go and check out mooncat’s Left in Alabama posting, she’s gone to the time and trouble to do a screen grab of the “list”, along with pointing you to the second questionable ad.

It needs to be addressed further, but I’m going to ignore that other ad, for today…and that’s because, to me, the list of names, including the font, the background, and the method of writing branch of service and “conflict served” all looks just a little too much like either the panels used at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall or the design of a US military gravestone.

"If you want to use issues to define people as to where they stand on the issues, that's fine," Bentley said. "But you shouldn't distort the facts."

--Robert Bentley, to Michael Tomberlin of The Birmingham News, May 17, 2010

So if Bentley did actually die in Vietnam…could he still be elected?

As it happens, there is some precedent here. Mel Carnahan, who was dead at the time, put the whup on John Ashcroft pretty good in their 2000 Senate contest; unfortunately Missouri’s closed-minded Acting Governor Roger Wilson was not willing to let Carnahan actually serve in the office, appointing his wife instead.

Which brings us to the final question: could the undead actually serve in office?

Have you ever met my Congressman, Dave Reichert?
Steve King?
Louie Gohmert?
Michelle Bachmann?
Arizona Governor Ann Brewer?

Any one of those people could have appeared in “Zombieland”, and I’ll let you decide which is your favorite later.

They’re also all serving in elected positions today, suggesting the undead can in fact hold high office—and if you need an even better example, Dick Cheney has been undead at least a couple of times, which didn’t keep him from serving as the 43rd President of the United States.

And with that, we come to the “let’s wrap it up” part of the deal:

Dr. Robert J. Bentley, the Republican nominee for Governor of Alabama, is running ads that either intentionally or “accidentally” inflate his military record by making you think he served in Vietnam…or he actually died there and he’s now walking the Earth as one of the undead and a medical doctor, bringing his unique perspective on end-of-life issues to the People in the best way he knows how.

I wish I knew which it was; my efforts to obtain some sort of comment about any of this from the Bentley Campaign were unsuccessful…which is probably a good idea if you’re running ads that suggest you were in Vietnam, when you really weren’t, and you know you’ll eventually be facing some incoming fire of your own.

It’s already been a pretty hot summer in Alabama.

Let’s see if we can’t spread this story around and make it even hotter for Dr. Bentley…because if anybody deserves to be in a warm place, it’s someone who tries to take advantage of the way we feel about those who die for this country.