CARLTON FLETCHER: Win or lose, Herschel Walker’s inadequacy will be revealed in Senate campaign

“A legend’s only a lonely boy when he goes home alone.”

— Carly Simon

Let’s get one thing straight right out of the box: Herschel Walker is great.

Wait a minute, let’s adjust that a tad: Herschel Walker was great … a great football player.

To University of Georgia fans, there will never be another like him. He carried them on his muscular back and legs to one of UGA’s two national football championships, so to a large part of the state, Herschel could never do wrong.

But Herschel Walker the Senatorial candidate is not great. He’s not good. He is, to put it kindly, an embarrassment. But the thing that makes me mad is that he’s an embarrassment not of his own making. It was Donald Trump’s great idea to have Walker — who had been living in Texas for the last several years — to run for the Senate. In Georgia.

Walker won the Republican primarily in the race for the Senate overwhelmingly. Even with an actual competent candidate in the mix — Gary Black — and other decent folks running as well, Walker didn’t even need a runoff to wipe his challengers out. Hell, he didn’t even have to debate them.

And that’s the thing. If Walker had debated in the primary, there would no doubt have been a whole lot of people who would have had second thoughts about voting for him.

See … hmm … how do I put this and not seem harsh? Welllll … Herschel’s just not that bright. His handlers have kept him quiet throughout most of this run-up to the election, just letting him get out and sign a few footballs and collect some big checks from these never-weres who want to bask in the glow of his long-ago celebrity. But when he slips up and says something to people who are not sycophants who could not care less if he doesn’t have the ability to spell Senator, his failure to grasp even slightly complex problems is revealed.

Like talking about being a valedictorian in high school. Hmmm … no. Like graduating among the tops in his class at UGA. Didn’t graduate. Like forgetting that, oh yeah, I did father a couple of kids that I forgot about. Like finding that magical spray cure for COVID (that sounds a lot like his mentor’s “drink bleach to kill the vaccine” idea). Like staying away from the New Green Deal because it might push all our good clean air to China and make us have to clean up their messy air. Like lying (or terribly misremembering) details about his business that actually preys on veterans rather than helping them.

Walker is running for the Senate because Trump told him to, and a lot of the clowns in Georgia who still think Trump is the second coming see Herschel as the answer to Raphael Warnock winning a seat and helping turn the Senate Democratic. But what they’re doing is tarnishing Walker the football player’s — and the man’s — legacy. By feeding Walker’s ego and telling him he can be a force in the Senate, these liars are setting him up for a huge fall.

And I don’t mean just if he loses, because there are a lot of people who don’t care if Walker can walk and chew bubble gum. They just love that R after his name … and the Trump endorsement. But if Warnock, the far superior opponent — and this is a guy with little political experience — somehow botches the election and loses to Walker, that’s when Herschel will really learn that ego and friends in high places do not add one point to your IQ.

Senator Walker would make Marjory Greene, whose fantasy life is equally pathetic as Walker’s lack of awareness, look like a Mensa member. He would not only shame the state, he would become the focus of Washington media types who would seek him out for sound bites that would reveal to the world how dumb people in Georgia really are.

Of course, if we elect Herschel Walker to serve in the U.S. Senate, we will already have proved that.