Why do they do it?
First it was NBC television anchor Brian Williams and now Veterans Administration Secretary Robert McDonald exaggerating their resumes.
The VA secretary was the latest, having been caught lying about serving in the special operations forces during a conversation with a homeless veteran last month.
McDonald, of course, was installed in the department just last July when the VA was dealing with the scandal of patient wait times -- and subsequent patient deaths -- at clinics around the country. He supposedly was a squeaky clean veteran who went on to become a corporate executive with Proctor & Gamble.
The VA secretary was in Los Angeles in January as part of a tour to locate and house homeless veterans when just such a vet said he'd served in the special forces.
"Special forces? What years?" McDonald asked in an exchange that was broadcast Jan. 30 on "The CBS Evening News." "I was in special forces."
The VA secretary actually did complete Army Ranger training but never served in a Ranger battalion or other special operations unit. He fessed up, too, once the Huffington Post called him on the error.
If we say McDonald and Williams were just trying to relate to their audiences in telling their stories, we make light of their exaggerations. If we say they were lying, we read too much into their intent.
Unfortunately, in our hyper-partisan political world, such incidents also bring out a tit-for-tat mentality. That's what happened when far left Mother Jones magazine -- assumedly to counter the liberal Williams' trouble -- tried to claim conservative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly exaggerated his claims about his presence in a "war zone" and "combat situation" during the 1982 Falklands war in Argentina.
Following the surrender of Argentina to Great Britain, O'Reilly and his camera crews filmed what he called "horrific" violence involving both Argentine soldiers and the public in Buenos Aires. His team's video led the nightly CBS news, and he later filed a nationwide report. The still-surviving footage and documents back up his story.
It's not too much to ask, though, in our selfie-driven, snarky Twitter, "did-I-just-say-that?" society that public servants like McDonald and pedestal-dwelling television anchors like Williams use a measure of restraint in rehashing their backgrounds.
It's too easy, after all, to catch their snafus, and it does nothing for their reputations.