First, do no harm

Okay, since this is a political column, it would be fair for you to assume that I am about to join the chattering class in castigating Ben Carson for his recent remarks about not wanting a Muslim to be President. An understandable surmise on your part, but wrong.

Before I seek to explain why Carson needs no healing, and has not done any harm, I can’t help but ask, why do we always forget there is another physician in the presidential sweepstakes? Rand Paul, like his father before him, is a doctor. Maybe it’s because Carson had such a renowned career as a pediatric neurosurgeon who pioneered separating conjoined twins (this made him “an okay doctor” according to Donald Trump), but I don’t think that’s the reason. The fact is, picture yourself in a waiting room; you’re hurt or you’re worried or you’re downright petrified . . . who do you want to see?  Not their fault I guess, but both Paul pere et fils are quirky-jerky types.

{mosads}And then there is Carson: measured, reassuring, exuding confidence and calm. He is always the grownup on the stage in this political silly season, so how could he blunder so badly in his Meet the Press interview? And why doesn’t he just apologize and get this behind him?

The short answer is, he did not blunder. And it is a testament to his character that he will not apologize. Do we really want another Hillary Clinton focus-group dictated apology? One more like that and I’ll need a doctor, any doctor, for my roiling stomach. I think, ultimately, she
apologized because we were all too stupid to understand she really didn’t do anything wrong.

But back to Carson. If you missed the interview, please read the transcript to see the context in which he said he doesn’t want a Muslim as president. The penultimate question had to do with whether the practice of Islam was inconsistent with our Constitutional form of government. Taken to an extreme, any religion will have tenets which offend. And historically, most religions have a history which includes some pretty awful practices. Our educator-in-chief thought it relevant in discussing Islamic beheadings, crucifixions, burnings, rape, and other current practices, to bring up the Crusades. Nothing like a little history lesson to substitute for a foreign policy.

Carson was talking about certain Islamic doctrines which are clearly inconsistent with our Constitution. I defy anyone, liberal or conservative, to try to align a commitment to Sharia law with our freedom of religion and separation of church and state, enshrined in the First Amendment. Or the denigration of women or the treatment of “apostates” with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

I served twenty years in the military, and again took the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution when I worked for a foreign affairs agency. That’s the oath a president must take. Lindsey Graham is correct to point out that we have Muslim Americans under arms right now who took that oath. I do not doubt their loyalty, and I never had any reason to doubt the loyalty of my Muslim shipmates or my Muslim civilian colleagues. I am confident Dr. Carson would agree that they are not only Constitutionally eligible to become president, they have demonstrated a set of beliefs which completely qualify them to hold any elective office, including the presidency. We have no religious litmus test and he knows that.

It’s not unusual for a politician to get wrapped around the axle on questions like this. When John Kennedy’s Catholicism was an issue in the 1960 campaign, his opponent, Richard Nixon, a pretty smart lawyer, piously intoned that it didn’t matter what religion a candidate had, so long as he was religious. Wrong on public policy grounds, and wrong on Constitutional grounds. Our founding document specifically states there is to be no religious qualification to hold public office.

But if a person’s faith dictates certain beliefs and practices which are antithetical to our Constitution, regardless of what faith that is, then neither Ben Carson nor I would vote for that person . . . and neither would you.

Haiman is a retired Naval officer and former deputy general counsel for USAID. He is a senior ethics adviser with Ethos, LLC, and teaches National Security and Police Science at George Washington University.