Kerr: Gen. Bolduc not the leader I thought he was. Hassan has record of accomplishment

When he previously campaigned for the U.S. Senate in 2020, I thought retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc seemed like an excellent candidate.

I’m one of those people who like having lawmakers with a military background. That’s because these folks typically have a genuine appreciation of service and sacrifice, a tangible sense of honor, and a commitment to country over self.

These all seem to be increasingly rare qualities.

Which was part of what I considered Bolduc’s appeal. This is a guy who enlisted as a private and retired as a brigadier general, served 10 — yes, 10 — tours in Afghanistan, earned five Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. He was one of the famous “horse soldiers” who took the fight directly to the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.

(Some have quibbled that Bolduc wasn’t technically one of the “horse soldiers” depicted in the 2018 Chris Hemsworth film “12 Strong,” but the guy served on horseback in Afghanistan — in my mind, that makes him a horse soldier.)

Perhaps even more admirable than his brilliant war record is Bolduc’s willingness to cast a spotlight on his own struggle with post-traumatic stress, in an effort to alleviate the stigma of PTSD. This, I thought, is a leader.

After failing to win the GOP nomination for one New Hampshire Senate seat in 2020, Bolduc ran again this year for the other. Good for him, I thought.

But this time around, he acted more like a follower than a leader.

I was hugely disappointed when Bolduc decided to go along with the extreme whackjob wing of the Republican Party in promoting bogus theories of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. At this point, I’m inclined to think most politicians promoting these claims are either dupes or liars — especially when considering, even two years later, not a single shred of evidence has turned up to back these theories.

“I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying that Donald Trump won the election and, damn it, I stand by it,” Bolduc said during the campaign.

Then, in one of the clumsiest and most transparent political flipflops I can remember, he decided the election was legit after all — two days after he secured the Republican nomination. He claimed he had “done a lot of research on this” before suddenly realizing the election wasn’t stolen after all.

So, here’s the thing — we can disagree on issues like abortion and defense spending and Social Security, because everyone’s entitled to their opinion. But if you support the attempted overthrow of a lawfully elected government because it didn’t go your way, I don’t want you anywhere near a position of power. Period.

If Bolduc had made this declaration, say, a month before the Republican primary, that would have been a legit demonstration of courage, the kind of act I would expect from a war hero. Now he just looks like another cynical, opportunistic politician who vastly underestimated the intelligence of his constituents.

Say what you want about Maggie Hassan, the incumbent senator he’s trying to unseat, but she strikes me as a doer.

Just in the past year, she and North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis introduced a bill to deliver health care and benefits to generations of veterans exposed to toxic substances.

She introduced a bipartisan bill with Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman to prepare the federal government’s defenses against quantum-computing-enabled data breaches.

Hassan and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley introduced a bipartisan bill to reauthorize the National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI), to provide cyber defense training to state and local law enforcement agencies.

Another bill she introduced with Grassley and Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst to prevent companies from engaging in conflicts of interest in federal contracting passed the Senate.

She introduced a bill with Texas Republican John Cornyn to help prevent child abuse.

She introduced bipartisan legislation with Kentucky Republican Rand Paul to save taxpayer dollars and cut waste by eliminating duplicative government programs.

She co-sponsored a bill to expand benefits for public safety officers disabled by traumatic service-related experiences, and for the families of these officers who die by suicide stemming from those experiences. This was signed into law by President Joe Biden as the Public Safety Officer Support Act of 2022.

She teamed with Indiana Republican Sen. Mike Braun to push for additional training for doctors in dealing with opioid use disorders.

She teamed with Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton to successfully demand the POW/MIA flag be returned to “its rightful place atop the White House” after it was removed during the Trump Administration.

This past summer, the Senate passed four bipartisan bills Hassan cosponsored to increase funding for small police departments, improve officer training, and improve mental health support for officers.

Just this past week, her bill to continue helping veterans make the transition to civilian life passed the House and is heading to Biden’s desk for signature. I could throw in many other examples, but you get the picture.

Around this time each election year, we hear a lot of empty rhetoric and buzzwords selected to incite rather than inspire. Maybe we should take a look at what people have actually accomplished in their respective roles and base our decisions on that.

D. Allan Kerr greatly admires Don Bolduc as an American warrior, but not so much as a politician.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Kerr: General Bolduc not the leader I thought he was