Ruth: Patrick Murphy pads his resume in Senate race

At least Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Palm Tree Princeling, looks like the U.S. senator from central casting. Now he is acting like one from House of Cards.

A somewhat cynical electorate doesn't demand that an aspiring politician hurdle a high bar. Have a pulse. Be reasonably honest. Have an idea, or two, that won't lead to nuclear war. And when you put stuff on your resume, can it at least be true? How hard should this be?

But in recent days, the Jupiter Democrat who wants to succeed Republican Sen. Marco Rubio has demonstrated he can't get straight the most mundane details of his personal history. On his campaign website, Murphy claimed he attained two degrees — in accounting and finance — from the University of Miami. In fact, as Kristen Clark of the Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau reported, the candidate has a single bachelor's degree in business administration from the school.

A campaign apparatchik shrugged off the discrepancy as an unintentional embellishment. Perhaps that explanation might have had some merit if Murphy had not been caught puffing himself up with the same claim back in 2012 when he first ran for the U.S. House. Even more worrisome, Murphy is a certified public accountant, and numerical accuracy is sort of a job requirement. If a CPA can't remember the difference between one and two, it might be a good idea to keep him off any budget committees. Those decimal points can be so confusing.

At 33, young master Murphy is barely 10 years removed from his college days. Yet he can't keep track of his major, or what it says on his diploma?

You're probably wondering in this era of opposition research and a multitude of fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact, what hustling politician would play fast and loose with the details of his background. The answer is either: A) Who knows? and/or B) the professional glad-hander playing you for a chump.

But we also know once a figure like Murphy, D-Tommy Flanagan, starts finagling his bio, it doesn't take long to start wondering what else coming out of the candidate's mouth is suspect.

So it wasn't long before questions started to be raised over Murphy's claims he was the Jacques Cousteau meets Rachel Carson of the Florida environment. When the BP oil spill spread in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, did Murphy immediately race to the shores of Louisiana and Alabama to assist in the recovery efforts of a devastating ecological nightmare?

Not quite. Murphy quit his job to help protect the Florida Keys, where no oil ever reached. But that hasn't stopped the Nathan Thurm of Foggy Bottom from portraying himself as the point man in the clean-up efforts, which might have involved sweeping the street in front of Sloppy Joe's Bar.

Murphy claimed his company, Coastal Environmental Services, led the cleanup efforts with a contract to provide oil-skimming services, disaster relief and recovery assistance.

Yet again, the resume-challenged Murphy has gotten himself into a credibility gap murkier than BP sludge. Coastal Environmental Services wasn't really the Joe Isuzu of the Potomac's company. It was started by his daddy, Florida developer Thomas Murphy, who also paid for his son's House seat and is bankrolling the lad's Senate bid. Are you beginning to suspect this kid is more high maintenance than a Kardashian?

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If the younger Murphy was the veritable one-man walking National Geographic Society he portrays himself to be, why wouldn't he be eager to release the details of his Olympian efforts to save the Florida Keys?

The Murphy For His Next Job campaign has refused to disclose to the public contracts the candidate claims he received to clean up the BP mother of all boo-boos, or explain how much oil he actually captured, or how much Daddy-cakes' company made defending Captain Tony's Saloon from an oil spill that never showed up.

The issue here is simple enough for even Murphy to grasp. If his Democratic Senate primary opponent — Rep. Alan Grayson, who has been accused of being the Robber Baron of the Beltway — is expected to explain his dubious investment deals, then Murphy has an obligation to come clean on his own financial history.

Such a learned scholar with all of those college majors ought to have figured that out by now.