Katie Zacharia admits she never passed legal exams – video
The strange part isn't that she didn't pass the bar. Plenty of people earn law degrees and never sit for the exam, or they fail it and move on to other things. What's odd is that she described herself as having practiced law, and the president called her an attorney, and nobody seemed to check until now. That gap between the claim and the record is the part that makes me wonder what else we're taking on faith.
This matters because the press secretary is the person who tells the country what the government is doing. If the basic facts of her own resume wobble under a little sunlight, it's fair to ask how carefully she'll handle the facts she delivers every single day. Credibility is the whole job, and this is a crack in the foundation before she's even given her first briefing.
I don't think a law license is required to be a good spokesperson. But the pattern of reaching for a credential that doesn't exist is worth watching. I'd want to know whether she ever actually practiced law in any real capacity, or whether that was always a stretch. Either way, the episode is a reminder that titles and degrees are not the same as the thing they claim to certify.