Democrats recognize a good line
Candidates recycle campaign material
MASON CITY, Iowa -- Senator Joseph I. Lieberman was so angry that the White House had blocked union protection for members of the new Homeland Security Department that he let President Bush have it last week as he sat beside his rivals for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
"Did anybody ask the firefighters and the police officers, all of whom were union members, whether they thought once about that before they went into those burning buildings on Sept. 11 and risked their lives, whether they were going to choose between the unions and security? No way!" the Connecticut senator said in Philadelphia, during a candidate forum arranged by the Sheet Metal Workers International Association.
A few minutes later, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts expressed similar outrage.
"This president is so quick to give speeches about the heroes of New York City," Kerry said. "Well, I look forward to reminding him that every single one of those heroes that went up those stairs and gave their lives so that someone else might live was a member of organized labor."
To the audience, it may have sounded like Kerry was lifting from Lieberman, but in reality, it was Lieberman who was clipping from Kerry.
In a comical game of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination are stealing one another's best lines. Most often, the crime takes place with little notice, as the candidates stump separately around the country. At other times, as in Philadelphia, it occurs in full view of the victim.
No one's hands are completely clean. Lieberman is not the only offender, and Kerry is not the only victim. So far, everyone is laughing about it, for the most part, with no candidate suffering serious repercussions. On Tuesday in Mason City, Kerry ripped off Senator John Edwards of North Carolina as he blasted Bush for not supporting family farmers. Kerry accused the president of being an urban cowboy out of touch with average Americans.
"We need a president who understands that connection to the land, for whom it's not just a question of sashaying around a ranch, recently bought, with a big belt buckle," Kerry said.
Edwards lifted an eyebrow when told of the comment, recalling what he said June 22 as he and Kerry attended a candidate forum in Newton. "This president is a complete, unadulterated phony," Edwards said at the time. "He believes that because he walks around on that ranch down in Crawford with that big belt buckle that he's standing for working people."
In an interview, Edwards chuckled and said: "It's politics. Those kinds of things happen."
Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri deadpanned, "We have filed copyright on 10 phrases." He protested that the administration seems to have claimed ownership of the phrase "shock and awe" after the bombing of Iraq, so "I'm trying to come up with phrases I can copyright."
The candidates say the byplay is the product of their frequent joint appearances, already nearing a dozen for the year, with five debates still on the way. They also say it is natural to gravitate toward similar types of criticism, given their philosophical differences with Bush and the Republican Party. In addition, many of the candidates are seeking advice from the same people, including former president Bill Clinton.
But the candidates also plead guilty to a bit of political plagiarism. Sometimes the loot is an effective turn of phrase. Other times, it is political policy, triggering protests from the candidates' advisers and e-mail exchanges with charges and countercharges of thievery. Both the Kerry and Gephardt teams, for example, have sniped as the candidates have talked about achieving energy independence by "going to the moon here on Earth," in Kerry's words, or through an "Apollo Project" in the United States, in Gephardt's phrasing.
"I think at this point, every time somebody else has a good line, the other person uses it," said Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, after seven of the nine candidates appeared Wednesday at a labor forum in Waterloo. "I haven't done it yet, but I'm going to do it for sure. The lines I want to steal are [Al] Sharpton's lines, though. He has the best lines of anybody; there's no question about it."
It was the New York civil rights activist, after all, who broke up the South Carolina Democratic convention in May with perhaps the funniest line to date in the primary campaign. Sharpton pledged to invigorate the party, declaring, "I want to slap the donkey until the donkey kicks and we kick George Bush out of the White House."
No one has yet to duplicate that, but Dean certainly has lifted a thing or two.
In February, he tried to contrast himself with his rivals by telling a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, "I'm Howard Dean, and I'm here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."
After a quick database search by some of his fellow candidates, Dean conceded the phrase was authored by the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who said as early as 1998, "I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party." In subsequent speeches, Dean has attributed the comment to Wellstone.
Kerry's campaign also accuses Dean of stealing an idea from its candidate: a proposal to produce 20 percent of the country's electricity from renewable resources by 2020.
Kerry has talked about the idea since at least 2002, repeating it again in June. Last month, Dean incorporated the idea in a speech on national security, saying it would be improved by reducing the country's dependence on foreign oil through concepts like the 2020 plan.
Edwards also has released a health care plan that focuses on cost control, a centerpiece of Kerry's proposal, and he also has taken to using phrasing Kerry has long employed to criticize Bush's economic record.
"My idea for starting a real recovery in America is to make sure that George. W. Bush loses his job as president of the United States," Edwards said Wednesday at the labor forum.
Four hours earlier, before a crowd at the Iowa State Fair, Kerry said to applause, "When you measure the real things that are happening to Americans, it ought to be clear to everybody that the one person in the United States who deserves to be laid off is George W. Bush."
Perhaps the most unlikely catch-phrase criminal is Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a graduate of Harvard Law School.
At the labor forum, he said people were getting fed up with Bush's reliance on "trickle-down economics," a theory based on the belief that tax cuts for the wealthy will benefit the poor by trickling economic activity down through the social classes. "I'm tired of being rained on," Graham told union members, to applause.
Kerry's criticism has a racier edge to it: "Trickle-down is not working, and the people I meet all across Iowa, all across this country, are tired of being trickled on by George W. Bush," Kerry said at the state fair.
In an interview, Graham gamely addressed the charges.
"Are you suggesting plagiarism?" he said with a smile.
"I would say the difference between `rained on' and `trickled on' is significantly different that you could not bring a breach-of-copyright action, in my expert opinion."
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com. 