It remains to be seen if the fallout from Barack Obama’s alleged plagiarism of a speech from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick will amount to much. Under a barrage of Team Clinton attacks, Obama admits error, while Patrick has stepped forward to take responsibility for suggesting that Obama borrow his lines.
Here’s what Obama said in Wisconsin over the weekend:
“Don’t tell me words don’t matter! ‘I have a dream.’ Just words. ‘We hold these truths to be self evident that all me are created equal.’ Just words. ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words. Just speeches. It’s true that speeches don’t solve all problems, but what is also true is if we cannot inspire the country to believe again then it doesn’t matter how many policies and plans we have and that is why I am running for president of the United States of America and that is why we just won eight elections straight, because the American people want to believe in change again. Don’t tell me words don’t matter.”
Compare that to then-candidate Patrick’s October 2006 speech. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ Just words? Just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words? ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Just words? ‘I have a dream.’ Just words?”
Now as far as incidents of plagiarism go, this seems like small Yukon Golds. But what this incident, and the Obama camp’s reaction to it, does show is that cracks in his messianic façade might finally be showing.
Predictably, the Clinton camp was hitting Obama hard on the issue the day before a competitive Wisconsin primary. Early Monday morning, Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson and Rep. Jim McGovern (D., Mass.), held a conference call to discuss the incident.
As to be expected, much of the call amounted to Clinton camp spin. “Senator Obama’s record as a legislator and a public official is thin. He has not had a long record in public life, so he is really asking us to judge him on the strength of his rhetoric and the strength of his promises,” Wolfson said. It follows that under these circumstances, scrutiny of that rhetoric brought to bear by the plagiarism accusations is fair game. Spin or not, it seems true enough that Obama’s staked bid for the presidency almost solely on the strength of his lofty-to-the-point-of-acrophobia rhetoric about “hope” and “change.”
As a result, his campaign rallies are almost entirely devoid of talk about policy. Obama will argue that there are plenty of specifics available on his website, where you can download a 64-page “Blueprint for Change.” But the question that the Clinton camp wants to raise is how many of his supporters are voting for the actual blueprint over the nebulous concept of “change”? That’s where Hillary thinks she has an edge.
Obama’s rhetoric
contrasts sharply with Hillary’s policy-heavy stump speech. For the past few months, Hillary’s been on the losing end of that contrast. So while it may be hard to indict Obama as a plagiarist in this instance, anything that gets voters to examine the substance — or lack thereof — behind Obama’s voter appeals is in Hillary’s best interest.
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