Tim Griffin, a former attorney general from Arkansas who is the Republican candidate for Congress for the district that includes my hometown, Clinton, recently made another Clinton resident -- a man named Johnny Rhoda -- a campaign adviser. Griffin introduces Rhoda as a "doctor," but it turns out his Ph.D. is from a diploma mill in the United Arab Emirates, Bedford University, that hands out degrees for a certain price without any work required.
I know this, and have known it, because as the story points out, a local veterinarian, Dr. Ben Mays, owns a bulldog with the same degree. (Disclosure, Dr. Mays is a good family friend. As are the family dogs.) Dr. Maxwell Sniffingwell got his degree because the Mays family cares a great deal about academic honesty and education, and Dr. Mays is, as the story puts it, "on a small crusade to stop people from duping clients by advertising phony academic achievements. Arkansas is one of the places where it is still legal to gull clients that way."
The story points out that resume fudging has been rampant in races across the country this year. But the broader problem for me is the extent to which the right, in general, and the populace as a whole still views academic achievement as suspect, rather than as a qualification for office. The hoopla over whether Christine O'Donnell had actually earned a degree in 1993 as she said was about how truthful she was being. As Paul pointed out a few months ago, politics is the only job where candidates seem to routinely tout their lack of qualifications. Phony qualifications seem like the natural next step.
-- Monica Potts