Plagiarism? No, just words (to borrow a phrase)
ONE REQUIREMENT for being in politics is the ability to say patently silly things with a tone of utmost seriousness.
Thus it was that on Monday, Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson and US Representative Jim McGovern set about trying to manufacture a campaign mountain out of something that barely qualifies as a rhetorical molehill.
The issue is Barack Obama's borrowing of one of Deval Patrick's oratorical constructs and two of his words.
This, reporters on a Clinton campaign conference call were told, raises fundamental - why, even "very fundamental" - questions about Obama and his candidacy. And as we all know, there's nothing quite so troubling as raised questions.
Some background: In countering Clinton's charge that he offers little beyond lofty rhetoric, Obama on Saturday spoke a series of sentences that are very similar to ones Patrick employed during the 2006 gubernatorial race.
To hear Wolfson and McGovern tell it, Obama lifted a vital and powerful passage of a major Patrick speech almost verbatim. There are several problems with that contention, however. For starters, almost all of the words spoken in common by the two men are sentiments first written or voiced by others. In a YouTube pairing, both quote the Declaration of Independence ("We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal") and Martin Luther King Jr. ("I have a dream"), and offer a common if inexact variation on FDR ("We have nothing to fear but fear itself"), though in different orders.
Given that Patrick didn't author those oft-quoted statements, Obama's use of the same quotations hardly qualifies as some great rhetorical theft. Notably, the only phrase of Patrick's that Obama spoke was "just words" (meant ironically), which he repeated three times.
In an attempt to defuse the matter, Obama has said he should have credited Patrick. That would have been polite, certainly, but was it really necessary in a campaign speech? Patrick, an Obama supporter, has said the two have talked several times about how to respond to a belittling of the importance of Obama's oratory, and that he urged Obama to adopt his words. If so, the Massachusetts governor was essentially functioning as adviser, and even wordsmith, for his friend.
But even if that weren't the case, it shouldn't matter much. This juxtaposition of well-known quotations simply isn't original enough to qualify as the unique creation of Patrick. As for Patrick's phrase "just words," it is, well, just words - oh, egad, make that, merely words - and pretty basic words at that, no matter how dramatic the emphasis. It would seem odd for Obama to have to somehow verbally footnote those two words to his friend.
Certainly Clinton herself has used phrases and ideas from others. In her first trip to New Hampshire as a presidential candidate, for example, she sounded a number of Bill Clinton's formulations and phrases, including his contention that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." I noted at the time that Clinton was echoing her husband, but would never have dreamed of suggesting that was plagiarism. And as the nightly newscasts have noted, that's hardly the only example of Clinton using words and themes that originated with others. (The Obama camp, for its part, has highlighted several instances where she has spoken some of his regular catchphrases or exhortations.)
Asked during the conference call if Clinton had ever appropriated the words of others, Wolfson suggested that wouldn't really matter, because "Senator Clinton is not running on the strength of her rhetoric."
Actually, it wouldn't matter for this reason: When it comes to campaign speech, it is ridiculous to make a big deal of such things if both the concept and the words are commonplace.
Wolfson and McGovern are both intelligent enough to realize that Obama's benign borrowing doesn't merit a serious comparison to plagiarism. But they just as obviously know that by pushing the matter, they can generate news coverage, muddying Obama up and perhaps slowing his momentum. In that regard, you'd have to call Monday's tinny exercise a success; it helped boost the story onto the newscasts and into the headlines.
Now, it's a regular, if regrettable, part of campaigns to have spokesmen like Wolfson voice charges that are transparent trumpery. McGovern, however, has a reputation as a smart, serious, and decent guy.
That's why it's particularly disappointing to see him lend himself to this kind of cheap tactic.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
