In an era in which Donald Trump calls Kamala Harris stupid and dumb while she calls him a fascist, it was refreshing to hear Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz call himself a knucklehead. At one time or another all of us are, but it’s surprising to hear self-deprecation from any politician. He was referring to his false claim that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen revolt. The allure of jazzing up one’s resume seems irresistible to some office holders: Hillary Clinton claimed she was under sniper fire in Bosnia. Joe Biden remarked that he’d been shot at as a senator visiting Baghdad. Both claims were false.
Not that Walz hasn’t made a few lies about his past. In 2004 he held a protest sign “Enduring Freedom Veteran 4 Kerry” when in fact he never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan but implied otherwise, spending that time in Italy. He puffed up his rank to command master sergeant when he never surpassed master sergeant. While railing against gun violence he asserted “that I carried in war” those “weapons of war” he wanted to eliminate from America’s streets. He was never in war. But much of this is standard political baloney, nothing peculiar to Walz. In fact, whatever his motive, he was absolutely correct to retire from the Army National Guard just before the Iraq war. The blood of innocent Iraqis killed in that war under cover of George W. Bush’s barefaced lies are not on Walz’s hands, to his credit.
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The problem with Walz is, after ranking high in the NRA’s estimate and having a slight image as a political moderate, he released his inner Mr. Hyde when Democrats took control of Minnesota’s Senate, House, and of course the governorship. Given a free hand when the opposition’s barriers crumbled, Walz let loose. He lately boosted the state budget nearly 40% in one fell swoop from the previous biennial budget.
Imagine an unleashed Walz in the White House, combined with his utter incompetence. Forum columnist Rob Port noted that more than 50% of those who got “hero pay” for pandemic work weren’t eligible. Frauds took a cool fourth of a billion dollars from the federal Feeding Our Future program in Minnesota for children’s meals during the pandemic. The sloppy Minnesota Department of Education under Walz’s administration was responsible for that fiasco. Millions were spent on opioid treatments that were never given. Audits show vast corruption in Minnesota’s state programs. President Warren Harding’s corrupt administration must be green with envy.
Of course, as part of the Democratic urge to crush free speech (while praising democracy), Walz as governor, Port points out, slow walks open records releases and “loses” text messages.
As a far-leftist Walz supports the usual woke policies. Although not solely responsible for the burning of the Twin Cities after George Floyd’s death, his remark says it all: ”What the world has witnessed…a community trying to understand who we are and where we go from here.” Law and order are irrelevant.