Charles Herbster unfit for public office?

 

Comments on the Herbster candidacy:

 Charles Herbster is unfit for public office. The kindest thing that can be said about Mr. Herbster is that he is not smart enough to understand that the former president's willful ignorance about science is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. That means he is not smart enough to hold elective office in a complex, technology-dependent, society.  His mailings proudly display his scientific ignorance relative to COVID-19, a virus that has killed nearly a million Americans, thousands of which can be laid on the desks of elected Republicans, including the former president, their disdain for vaccines and masks, and their delusion that mandates are somehow an attack on American freedom. American science has provided the only weapons even partially successful against this pandemic disease, an enemy “against which political genius and military valor are utterly useless” in the words of historian Hans Zinsser. There is a long list of Republican officials who are either not smart enough to understand that simple biology lesson, or don’t care about the impact this disease has had on families and our health care system. Herbster’s latest mailing flouts Kristi Noem as a model for how responsible officials should handle COVID. South Dakota ranks far ahead of Nebraska in terms cases per capita and has nearly three times the rate of COVID deaths per capita. Anyone running for Nebraska governor should be smart enough to figure that out before bragging about an administration far less successful than that of Lancaster County.

Obviously COVID is only one aspect of an administration’s challenges. But Nebraskans deserve better than someone who is either not smart enough to understand what his advertising is telling us about his scientific illiteracy, or believes we don’t care, even after watching such ignorance play out at the national level. Herbster also flaunts the fact that he is the only candidate endorsed by a former president who has appeared in court 3,500 times and settled multi-million dollar fraud cases in two states, one of which has enjoined him from ever operating a charity again. The public record of those 3,500 cases reveal a person with no sign of the kind of honesty and respect for the law that the vast majority of Nebraskans cherish and exhibit. C’mon, Republicans; you can do better than Charles Herbster, a lot better. I’ve been a registered Republican since 1958 and you do not represent my values, not at all.