Wes Moore is another self-made myth Democrat

Why do top Democrats have such a troubled relationship with the truth about themselves?

Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, is a fast-rising, fast-talking star in the Democratic Party. I’m told that his speech at last month’s Democratic National Convention was electrifying — maybe the best at the convention.

Moore, who is black, has been touted as the new Barack Obama. And, quite apart from his race, he does resemble Obama in several ways.

One of them is what I call autobiographical lying. Obama repeatedly departed from the facts in Dreams From My Father, his autobiography. He asserted poetic license as his defense.

Moore’s lying is of the more prosaic kind. It’s old-fashioned fibbing.

In 2006, Moore applied for a White House fellowship. In his application, he claimed to have received the Bronze Star for heroic or meritorious achievement. He had not.

Moore, a former National Guardsman who was a military policeman in Afghanistan, now admits making the claim, and admits it was false. However, he argues that it was “an honest mistake.” He says he listed the Bronze Star because he had been recommended for it and assumed it would come through because two other senior officers had signed off.

But being recommended for a medal and believing you will receive it aren’t the same thing as receiving a medal. It’s not an honest mistake to confuse the two when seeking a plum job.

Furthermore, on two occasions long after 2006, television interviewers introduced Moore as a Bronze Star recipient. Moore did not correct them. On the contrary, he nodded in agreement. And when this issue surfaced during his 2022 campaign for governor, he insisted he had never claimed to have received the award.

That claim was shown to be a lie when the New York Times obtained a copy of his 2006 White House application. In it, Moore stated: “For my work, the 82nd Airborne Division have awarded me the Bronze Star Medal and the Combat Action Badge,”

Moore’s tenuous relationship with the truth about himself extends beyond his military record. Like Obama, Moore wrote an autobiography while still a young man. The Washington Post reports:

Since launching his political career, [Moore] has faced claims that [in his book] he embellished some details — related to where he grew up and what military or college football awards he received. . . .including the suggestion that Moore had grown up in Baltimore. He spent most of his childhood in the Bronx.

Stand up guy that he is, Moore blames his publisher for that one.

Lying is a bipartisan practice among politicians. Donald Trump is a serial liar. But top Democrats specialize in Moore’s kind of lying — let’s call it biographical lying. (George Santos, a Republican took this form to a new extreme, but he was a lowly congressional candidate (and briefly a freshman congressman), not a president, a candidate for vice president, or a rising star on the national political scene.)

I have already mentioned Obama, the poetic fabulist. Joe Biden is infamous for lying about his past. He lied despicably about the automobile accident that killed his wife and daughter. He lied about his grandfather’s death. He falsely claimed to be a coal miner from a family of coal miners.

Biden falsely claimed he was shot at in Iraq. He falsely claimed that his Delaware house caught fire, almost killing his wife, dog, and cat and melting his Corvette. He even lied about his use of Amtrak. And so on.

Tim Walz is also a serial liar. He has lied about his military rank and service, about his drunk driving arrest, and even about how his children were conceived.

And now we can add Moore, who clearly aspires to national office, to the list.

Why this pattern? One possible explanation is that Democrats think they can get away with lying about themselves to a degree that Republicans can’t. Such a belief would be realistic, given media bias in favor of the Democrats. Biden certainly got away with decades of lying.

It might also be the case that Democrats, more than Republicans, feel a need to prove they are tough patriots. National security is an area where Republicans generally hold an advantage in the public mind.

Making false or exaggerated claims about their military service (or in Biden’s case being under enemy fire) is a way for leading Dems to counter this public perception. It’s a lot easier than fully backing the military and the use of force against our enemies, when push comes to shove.

Moore lied about his “Bronze Star” before he was a candidate for office. But I believe Moore has, in a sense, been running for office his entire adult life. Generally, one doesn’t apply for a White House fellowship and then write an autobiography at age 32 if one isn’t thinking seriously about a future in politics.

It’s quite possible that JD Vance was thinking about a future in politics when he wrote Hillbilly Elegy, also at the age of 32. But for all the scrutiny Vance has come under, especially since his nomination for vice president, I’ve never seen any suggestion that he falsified or embellished facts about himself. Attacks on the book focus instead on whether Vance got Appalachia right — a political/sociological dispute, not a biographical one.

The difference between Vance and Walz on this score is clear. I think it’s emblematic of a difference between how top level Democrats and Republicans talk about their personal histories.