Far stretch to dub Ward ‘worst candidate ever’

Before he got the thumbs-down from voters in Idaho’s Republican primary last week, Vaughn Ward was labeled “worst candidate ever” from a liberal news website, Talking Points Memo.

It was part of Ward’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month, which included removing positions from his website after it was pointed out they seemed cribbed from other candidates; calling Puerto Rico a country, then seeming to not care about the mistake by tossing off a “whatever you call it”; and having a video in which parts of his speech echo Barack Obama show up on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

Not to take sides in this, but as colleague Betsy Z. Russell has pointed out, the speech video was put together by a backer of Raul Labrador, Ward’s primary opponent, and spliced for maximum effect. It also has phrases like “standing on the crossroads of history” and “making the right choices, meeting the challenges” and “the country reaching its promise” that candidates have been slinging for centuries.

Besides, Obama’s a good orator – even John McCain said so in 2008 – so who should Ward have borrowed from? James Stockdale?

The real quibble with Talking Points Memo, and other pundits who slapped Ward because he was an easy target, is any suggestion that he rates worst-ever status. That’s a dig not only to Ward, but to Idaho, suggesting that a little Red state could be responsible for the bottom of the barrel.

The same day it was chortling over the Ward mashup video, Talking Points was reporting on Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, running for the U.S. Senate, who lied about serving in Vietnam. And there was former U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, candidate for Senate in Arizona, saying the United States didn’t declare war on Nazi Germany in 1941, then arguing through a spokesman that the declaration of war was open to interpretation.

Considering this was Ward’s first campaign, and those two are experienced pols, he arguably wasn’t even the worst candidate of the week.

The point is, the title of worst candidate can’t be awarded cavalierly. It must be earned. With so many bad candidates in the mix each year, we should have bracketed playoffs like the NCAA basketball tournament. Maybe the brackets should be arranged by local, state, federal and presidential candidates, rather than geographic regions. And “bad” shouldn’t be defined as “can’t/won’t/didn’t win.” It would have to involve boneheaded strategy, incredible gaffes, inane policy statements or moral turpitude.

Worst-ever is even tougher. It’s like proving Hank Aaron and not Babe Ruth was the best home run hitter of all time. Whoever you come up with, though, will be hard-pressed to beat Robert Tilden Medley, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1998 in Washington on a platform of canceling all Indian treaties, “slamming the door” on nonwhite immigration, sending all minorities to Africa, setting up compounds where the poor would care for the mentally ill, and “sodomy clubs” for homosexuals that would pay for AIDS research.

Medley didn’t win, of course. He finished 12th out of 13 in a very crazy primary. But the point is, he got on the ballot and got votes. And was so encouraged that he ran again in 2000, to finish sixth of nine.

Compared to Medley, Ward could star in a remake of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”