Hillary’s “Plagiarism”
Ok, I’m not usually into these campaign squabbles, but the plagiarism accusation is serious ground, especially for a former academic. Of course, it wasn’t, as Obama explained that the plagiarized himself suggested he use the phrase, and Clinton still tried harping on it in the debate. Maybe that will backfire given her own ‘lifting.’ There are interesting debates going on, but I’m pretty sure this is Clinton at her worst. Drezner:
Hello, pot? It’s Hillary Clinton’s kettle calling!!
Hillary Clinton, February 21, 2008 debate with Barack Obama: “You know, lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”
Hillary Clinton, later on in the same debate: “You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”
Jack Stanton speech, in Primary Colors (New York: Random House, 1996), p. 162: “Y’know, I’ve taken some hits in this campaign. It hasn’t been easy for me, or my family. It hasn’t been fair, but it hasn’t been anything compared to the hits a lot of you take every day.”
I can’t find the actual 1992 Bill Clinton speech upon which this fictional version was based, but I suspect there are some strong similarities. [UPDATE: Thank you, Josh Marshall -- "The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of this state and this country have been taking for a long time."]
Josh Marshall picked up on this as well:
9:46 PM … That was an interesting final moment to end on for Hillary. Candy Crowley is on CNN now saying how it was a good connect moment for HIllary, which I suspect it may have been. But we all do remember that those words were borrowed from Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, right?
Right.UPDATE: Politico’s Ben Smith picks up some more lifted lines.
