If you were creating a new award for the silliest political stunts by a Kentucky politician, after this week you’d be hard-pressed as to whether you would name it the Massie Award or the Mattie Bevin Award.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie had a banner week, embarrassing the state on the national stage with his shameless attempt to cast shade on former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who went before the House Oversight Committee to testify about climate change.

But could he have been outdone by Gov. Matt Bevin, whose errors were more local but also multiple.

And please don’t email or call complaining that I’m not taking on Democrats here.

Their errors of late have been traditional, run-of-the-mill governing screw-ups, whether it be the Louisville Metro Council Democrats who decided to bolt the party and support cutting services in the city’s neighborhoods or Mayor Greg Fischer, who refuses to bring Police Chief Steve Conrad to heel for a stop-and-frisk policy in Louisville’s black neighborhoods.

But I digress. We’re here to talk about what silly things politicians from Kentucky did this week.

Read this:'Are you serious?' John Kerry and Thomas Massie clash in heated debate over global warming

So we’ll start with Massie, whose stunning cross-examination of Kerry proved that … it uncovered that ... well it showed us all that even someone with degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can make a fool of himself.

See, Kerry knows about climate change and negotiated the Paris climate agreement on greenhouse gas emissions. But Massie had the brilliant idea that he could discredit Kerry by making him admit that his degree from Yale was in — aha! — political science, which according to Massie is a “pseudoscience.”

Kerry, who has studied the subject and knows it backward and forward, even if he doesn't have a degree in earth sciences — which by the way neither does Massie — seemed somewhat appalled by the disingenuous line of questioning.

"Are you serious? I mean, this is really ... happening here?" he replied.

The exchange prompted a lot of fun-making on the inter-webs and elsewhere.

Rolling Stone magazine had a headline asking, “Is this the dumbest moment in Congressional history?”

Singer John Legend tweeted to Massie, “Bro. Please tell me you're not this dumb in real life. Please tell me you're joking.”

Legend followed that up with another tweet that said, “Next our great congressman will grill the high school Home Economics teacher on the Fed's monetary policy. ‘You profess to be an expert on Economics, do you???!!!!’”

Ah, but then there is Bevin who not only picked a fight with Republican Senate President Robert Stivers and suggested in a letter to him that he’s either too stupid to understand a pension bill the legislature passed last month or was lying about Bevin’s need to veto it.

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It seems that Bevin's re-election plan might be to make everyone in his own party despise him. His relationship with the Republican House of Representatives is already in shambles.

His attack on Stivers came the same day Bevin went on the radio and trashed University of Louisville women’s basketball coach Jeff Walz, who had roasted Bevin on Twitter a couple of weeks earlier during the NCAA Tournament after Bevin congratulated the University of Kentucky men’s team for making it to the Elite Eight but ignored the U of L women.

"I feel bad saying this, but it's true. If he'd been a little more focused on game strategy and coaching that weekend, and a little less on this kind of silliness, the better team would have won," Bevin said on the Terry Meiners' show on Wednesday. "We got outcoached, straight up."

The women lost to the University of Connecticut and Hall of Fame basketball coach Geno Auriemma, 80-73. In his 11 seasons at U of L, Walz has turned the team into a powerhouse, reaching the Final Four three times and losing in the finals twice.

But maybe Bevin, who is prone to social media rants, should heed his own advice.

I feel bad about saying this, but it’s true. If Matt Bevin had been a little more focused on game strategy and governing during the last legislative session and a little less on this kind of silliness, a better pension bill would have passed.

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Joseph Gerth's opinion column runs on most Sundays and at various times throughout the week. He can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/josephg.