As many African-American see it, there are 2 Ben Carsons
Ayauna King-Baker loved Ben Carson‘s “Gifted Hands” memoir so much that she made her daughter Shaliya read it. So when Carson showed up in town to sign copies of his new book, King-Baker dragged the giggly 13-year-old along to the bookstore so they could both meet him. To King-Baker, Carson’s “up-by-your bootstraps” life story makes him a genuine celebrity worth emulating in the African-American community. But she’s also a Pompano Beach Democrat watching Carson rise in the Republican presidential polls. For King-Baker and many other African-Americans, the vast majority of whom are Democrats, there are two Carsons: One is a genius doctor and inspirational speaker and writer who talks of limitless horizons; the other is a White House candidate who pushes conservative politics and wishes to “de-emphasize race.” How they reconcile the two may help determine whether Republicans can dent the solid support Democrats have enjoyed in the black community for decades. President Barack Obama won 95 percent of the black vote in 2008 and 93 percent in 2012. Carson wasn’t immune to the excitement of seeing the U.S. elect its first black president. “I don’t think there were any black people in the country that weren’t thrilled that that happened — including me,” Carson told The Associated Press in a recent interview when asked about Obama’s first victory. “Everyone had hope this would be something different. It was nice having that hope for a little while.” Carson has since become an aggressive critic of Obama’s. Carson rose to prominence in the tea party movement after repudiating the president’s health care law in front of Obama during the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast. Today, Carson charges that Obama’s performance has actually set black candidates back. “I don’t think he’s made my path any easier,” he said. “So many people said there’d never be another black president for 100 years after this.” Carson has not gone out of his way to court black voters this year. He insists he won’t change his message to attract specific audiences, although his campaign tried a rap-filled ad this month. He already has one convert — King-Baker. She says she plans to change her registration to vote for the doctor in the Florida primary. “He has the momentum, he has the conversation, he’s very serious, he’s speaking to the people, and I just think he would be a very good president,” she said. None of this will matter unless Carson survives the primaries, where he’s been leading in early preference polls. Black votes aren’t a major factor in GOP primaries. Only about 16 percent of African-American voters affiliated with the Republican Party in 2012. But they will be a factor in the November general election. African-American voters are one of the few growing segments of the voting public. The percentage of black voters eclipsed the percentage of whites for the first time in 2012, when 66 percent of blacks voted, compared with 64 percent of non-Hispanics whites and about 48 percent of Hispanics and Asians. Carole Bell, a professor of communication studies at Northeastern University, estimates that Carson could attract as much as 25 percent of the African-American vote if he’s the GOP candidate. “That would be a tremendous accomplishment for the GOP at this stage,” she said. Carson is better known by African-American voters than were other black Republicans who ran for president, such as businessman Herman Cain, who achieved passing prominence in the 2012 race, and former ambassador Alan Keyes before him. Carson was a celebrated figure before he entered politics because of his work as a neurosurgeon. Carson led a team that successfully separated conjoined twins, which led to movie appearances, best-selling books, a television biography and a motivational speaking career that crossed racial lines. “Black people were proud that Carson had become a famous surgeon and had accomplished what no one else ever had in separating the twins,” said Fredrick Harris, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. That’s part of his appeal, said Rebecca Britt, 43, a registered Democrat who also came to see Carson in Fort Lauderdale and buy his most recent book. “He’s one of the heroes in our community, with what he’s been able to accomplish in the medical field,” she said. But can that translate into many black votes? Carson has said he would not support a Muslim for president, a position his campaign says helped him raise money and attract conservative support. He’s been critical of the Black Lives Matter movement, which drew its name from protests that followed the death of an unarmed black 18-year-old, Michael Brown. The retired neurosurgeon told the AP that Americans should take the focus off of race during a recent trip to Brown’s hometown, Ferguson, Missouri. Carson may draw support from conservative African-Americans and those already in the GOP, but it’s unlikely that he would make major inroads in the Democratic Party’s dominance among blacks in a general election, said D’Andra Orey, a political science professor at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. Given the GOP’s fraught history with African-Americans, it could be “nearly impossible for blacks to support a Republican who espouses what they deem to be racially conservative rhetoric,” Orey said. “Put short, it’s an uphill battle for any Republican who seeks out the black vote.” Bell, the Northeastern professor, said Carson’s celebrity may have helped him at the beginning of his candidacy, but that shine may have worn off. “He had tremendous positives before he started speaking as a potential candidate,” Bell said, “but the more he speaks, the more there’s opportunities to sort of really show there’s a gulf between him and a lot of African-Americans.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Rivals unmoved by Ben Carson’s complaints on scrutiny of his bio
Ben Carson says it’s time to move on from questions about the accuracy of his life story. But Tuesday’s Republican debate makes that unlikely, and some of his GOP rivals say such scrutiny is part of running for president. The retired neurosurgeon said Sunday that questions about discrepancies in his autobiography are distractions from “much more important” matters facing the country and that he’d discuss any “real” scandal uncovered about his past. He strongly disputed any dishonesty or wrongdoing. “Every single day, every other day or every week, you know, they’re going to come out with, ‘Well, you said this when you were 13,’ ” Carson said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “The whole point is to distract the populace, to distract me,” he added. Carson got no sympathy Monday from a pair of Republicans who are trailing him in the presidential polls and said they had endured years of personal scrutiny as governors. “We’re responsible for the personal stories we tell about our lives and we need to be asked about them,” New Jersey Gov. [Chris] Christie said about Carson on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said when he heard Carson’s complaints about the media, “I’m thinking pal, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” “You know that if you run for office you’re going to be put through the sausage grinder,” Huckabee told MSNBC. Moving on, at least in the short term, is unlikely for Carson. The accuracy of his autobiography has dominated his campaign in the past few days, and more questions are likely during Tuesday’s debate. The intensified questioning reflects Carson’s transformation from political outsider to the top of the polls in the unsettled nomination fight, second only to billionaire developer Donald Trump. And in early-voting Iowa, some polls show Carson leading. Trump tried Sunday to keep the allegations alive. On several news shows, he mentioned examples from Carson’s autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” about Carson’s bad temper when he was young. Carson claimed that he tried to hit his mother with a hammer and unsuccessfully tried to stab someone. Several times, Trump quoted Carson as describing his younger self as having a “pathological” temper — and then demurred on his own opinion of Carson’s character and veracity. “I just don’t know. I mean, I’m not involved. I don’t really know,” Trump said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Carson insists no other candidate has received the level of scrutiny that he has. Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he is being scrutinized more than President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, Carson replied: “Not like this. Not even close.” Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus criticized the intense questioning Monday, saying that while he considers candidate vetting by the media appropriate, “I do believe this is a totally, crazy obsession over incredible detail from 30 or 40 years ago.” “The fact is, you know, we wish the media would be just as obsessed with Hillary Clinton’s lies over the years,” Priebus said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show. Scrutiny of one’s past is par for any major candidate for president. Obama’s citizenship was questioned, including by Trump, and the president later released a birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii. Clinton’s marital dalliances were probed during the 1992 campaign. The Miami Herald staked out then-Sen. Gary Hart‘s townhouse in 1987 and caught him in an extramarital affair. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, last month testified about the private email server she kept at her house and used for government business while she was secretary of state. Carson is a newcomer to presidential politics, so much about his life, career and published works are being raked over for the first time, and his longtime status as an American success story is being examined. Carson strongly disputed that there was any dishonesty intended. Gone Sunday was the anger he showed during a news conference on Friday, when the usually even-tempered Carson demanded that reporters explain why, in his opinion, Obama had not been subjected to the same level of scrutiny. “My job is to call you out when you’re unfair, and I’m going to continue to do that,” he said. “Gifted Hands” is central to much of the scrutiny. It tells the story of Carson’s rise from a childhood in inner-city Detroit to director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. In it, he tells of trying to stab a close friend when he was a teenager. CNN reported it could not find friends or confidants to corroborate that story. Politico published a piece examining Carson’s claim of receiving a scholarship offer to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The Wall Street Journal said it could not confirm Carson’s anecdotes from his high school and college years. The academy does not offer scholarships, instead extending all expenses paid to students it admits. Carson never applied for admission. Last month, police in Baltimore said they didn’t have enough information to verify Carson’s account of being held at gunpoint at a fast-food restaurant there more than 30 years ago. In a GOP debate last month, Carson said it was “absolutely absurd” to say he had a formal relationship with the medical supplement company Mannatech. He is featured in the firm’s videos, including one from last year in which he credits its supplements with helping people restore a healthy diet. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Ben Carson: Can a man of great surgical skill lead a nation?
Ben Carson is the only 2016 candidate for president who has never led a state or company or run for political office. No matter, he says. Surely someone who can perform life-or-death surgeries can run the country. Carson challenged the medical status quo as a storied neurosurgeon — cutting out half of a child’s brain to end her seizures, separating twins joined at the head — in a three-decade career at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “I believe in getting the best out of everybody,” Carson told The Associated Press. “In my operating room, everybody was free to speak.” He said, “I want that person who is cleaning the floor, if they see something, to say something.” But the White House is a long way from the operating room, where the doctor with the technical skill unquestionably is the one in charge, not the best deal-maker or diplomat seeking consensus. Carson’s lack of executive experience produces deep skepticism from critics in both parties. Yet he’s among the leaders in the Republican presidential campaign. In a new Associated Press-GfK poll, Carson has the highest positive and lowest negative rating of any Republican sized up by registered GOP voters, with 65 percent giving him a favorable rating and just 13 percent rating him unfavorably. Moreover, 62 percent of such voters think he could win the presidency if he is nominated, second only to the 71 percent who think of Donald Trump as an electable candidate. Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who ran the Clinton administration’s “reinventing government” program, says she, like many others, is in awe of neurosurgeons and other doctors who heal people. “We love them but, hello, that doesn’t even remotely resemble what the job of president is,” she said. Conversely, “I would not want my neurosurgeon experienced in the art of negotiation.” At least one similarity between the professions: crises at any hour. “He was never one of those surgeons that throws things or yells and screams,” said Dr. Violette Recinos, who was trained by Carson and now directs pediatric neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic. As a resident at Hopkins, she often had to wake the surgeon late at night when a patient needed immediate care. “No matter what time I called him, he was never angry, he was never grouchy,” she said. Longtime colleagues don’t know what to make of Carson’s political persona, contrasting the doctor they saw as devoted to patients of all backgrounds with his divisive comments such as a statement that a Muslim shouldn’t be president. Pediatricians were dismayed when Carson questioned whether children get too many vaccines at once, even as he disputed any link with autism. And though he opposes abortion rights, Carson has defended co-authoring a 1992 study that used fetal tissue, telling CNN there’s a difference between performing abortions and using tissue someone else already stored. “People have asked me what his politics were like,” said Dr. Henry Brem, neurosurgery chairman at Hopkins, who joined the faculty with Carson in 1984. “There was no politics in the hospital, zero. It was never discussed.” Brem said Carson was “very willing to think outside the box. A lot of patients came to him that other surgeons were not willing to take the risk to operate on.” Could the political rhetoric tarnish Carson’s medical legacy? “There’s a part of me wishes he’d never entered the political fray,” Dr. Damon Tweedy, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University, said in an interview about a hero of his youth. Tweedy recently wrote in The Washington Post about how Carson was an inspiration for him and many other black medical students, with his rise from childhood poverty to become a pediatric surgical pioneer who established scholarships for kids. So Tweedy was stunned when Carson compared President Barack Obama‘s health care law to slavery. In medicine, Carson is best known for leading a 22-hour operation in 1987 to separate German twins joined at the head — the first such attempt when both babies survived. But Brem said Carson’s larger contribution was in reviving a radical operation that had largely been abandoned as too dangerous: He removed half the brain of a child with a rare condition inflaming the entire left hemisphere. “There was a lot of fear in doing that,” recalled Brem, explaining that it works in children young enough for flexible remaining brain tissue to compensate. Carson wrote in his autobiography “Gifted Hands,” that doctors in the past may have chosen inappropriate patients for the procedure or lacked the skills. Regardless, “we were at least giving this pretty little girl a chance to live,” he wrote. It worked, and soon other desperate families were calling. Carson said he doesn’t miss what medicine had become by the time he retired as chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Hopkins two years ago. No more simply flying in a child from, say, Guatemala for complex surgery. “Now it’s like, every penny, nickel and dime has to be counted, you go through 600 bureaucrats,” he said. “It just wasn’t exciting.” And he dismisses criticism of his lack of political experience: “You need skill to bring in trustworthy people who understand the complete corruption of the system as it exists now,” Carson said. “You don’t have to be part of that.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
