That Ben Carson is smart is one of those things that must be true. He graduated from Yale University and the University of Michigan Med School. He’s written several books. He literally did brain surgery, he was the first to perform multiple types of surgeries including certain surgeries on a fetus inside the womb and successfully separating twins conjoined at the head. The man’s a genius, the real kind not the stable one.
It hurts me to see him portrayed as stupid just because of a few, okay lots of bad decisions and how bad he looks every time he testifies before Congress. Let’s make one thing clear, Ignorance is not Stupidity! One can not know a damn thing about a subject. Like Carson knows nothing about housing, and still be a really smart guy. Ben Carson is a really smart guy!
So what he’s the Housing Secretary and doesn’t know what REO (Real Estate Owned) properties are. I know but that’s only because I was once a Realtor and dealt with them every day. Ben is an administrator and can’t be expected to know every little thing about housing, even if it represents a huge percentage of what his department is responsible for. Every buyer I worked with knew what REO’s are as they made up a huge part of the market. Every real estate investor in America knows, many small children are aware of REO’s. I suspect everyone in the entire Housing Department is aware of the term. They’ve got him covered.
Ben Carson makes occasional mistakes, we all do. He’s an important busy man and doesn’t have time to keep up with everything he’s responsible for. If he gets a few details wrong from time to time, those aren’t really lies, just misremembrances. When in high school, he says he turned down a scholarship from West Point (which doesn’t offer scholarships). He says he sheltered some white kids during a Detroit race riot though nobody remembers him doing that. Carson says his SAT scores precipitated a Detroit Free Press article that can’t be found, “Carson Gets Highest SAT Scores in Twenty Years” of any student in Detroit public schools. Carson’s scores placed him in the 90th percentile. In Minneapolis, I placed in the 95th percentile and was third in my Sunday School class.
Earlier this week, Carson testified before Congress that he “had no plans to alter” an Obama-era rule protecting LBGTQ people in Federally funded shelters. The next day, his department published proposed rule changes gutting the existing provisions. Rep. Jennifer Wexton, called for his resignation saying the following, “He either lied to Congress or has no idea what policies his agency is pursuing. Either way, it’s unacceptable.” Being a liar doesn’t mean you’re stupid, just dishonest.
That whole situation with the dining room table was blown way out of proportion and could have happened to anyone. What had happened was… his wife was the one who actually spent $31,000 on a dining room set. Maybe it was questionable the way threw her under the bus when deflecting blame but that’s a character flaw and has nothing to do with I.Q.
There are some that say Ben Carson was way over his head when he campaigned for President and again as the head of the Housing Department. His campaign spent over $58 million with almost all going to political consultants and fundraising. Almost none went towards advertising, everybody around him was getting paid though. When he was first named as a possible political appointee. One of his friends said, “The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.” There were concerns when he was named the Housing Secretary that his inexperience would be a liability. Inexperience is not stupidity.
In an attempt to find congruency between his brain surgery background and his faux pas as Trump Cabinet member. Some have gone as far as to suggest Carson has some type of autism. He’s an idiot savant when it comes to medicine but helpless in other areas of his life. I reject that notion, Ben Carson is one of the smartest men that ever lived, he must be, isn’t he?
Reclaiming My Time