Resume Padding Election Style

In recent years we have seen several instances where lost jobs because of resume padding. George O'Leary had to quit as Notre Dame head football coach just day after taking the job when his resume padding came to light. David Edmondson was CEO of Radio Shack when the lies on his resume where revealed. Within days, Edmondson was canned due to a loss of trust despite doing a good job.

A candidate for public office is essentially submitting their resume for review every time they give stump speech. So what can a candidate do who has little or no personal accomplishments to cite? Well, a candidate of weak character will claim other people's accomplishments as their own. There are varying degrees of this act. The minor resume padding is when a politician says "helped fix such and such" when they merely voted for legislation that was authored by another politician. A more serious violation is claiming to fix something that was done before you entered office such as Sen. Obama claiming to be involved in welfare reform which cleared congress years before he was elected and which he had previously stated he was opposed to enacting. However, both of those examples pale in comparison to claiming to hold a job title you don't. From National Review Online's Corner with props to Powerlineblog.

This guy is going to be harder than Bill Clinton to keep up with. The next whopper whips along before you have time to wrap your brain around the last one.

At Powerline, John Hinderaker goes through Obama's continuing contortions (in Israel) over how Jerusalem must remain the undivided capitol of Israel, unless of course it is divided and unless of course it is also the capitol of "Palestine," which possibilities absolutely positively mark no change in the messiah's original decree, which he really really meant, that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capitol of Israel. Obama then continued (italics mine):

Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don't have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don't obtain a nuclear weapon.

Huh, wonder how Sen. Dodd (you know the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee) felt when he heard it was Obama's committee.

The real question is will the voters require as exacting standards of trust for the presidency that Notre Dame had for their coaching position?