I thought Barack Obama wants to change politics.
I thought he promised to be different.
Instead, I discover that Obama is a Joe Biden.
These latest revelations about Obama have crushed my hopes!
From the New York Times:
Senator Barack Obama adapted one of his signature arguments — that his oratory amounts to more than inspiring words — from speeches given by Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts during his 2006 campaign.
At a Democratic Party dinner Saturday in Wisconsin, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, responded to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who has criticized him for delivering smooth speeches but says they do not amount to solutions to the nation’s problems, by ticking through a string of historic references.
“Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Mr. Obama said, to applause. “ ‘I have a dream’ — just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ — just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ — just words? Just speeches?”
Mr. Patrick employed similar language during his 2006 governor’s race when his Republican rival, Kerry Healey, criticized him as offering lofty rhetoric over specifics. Mr. Patrick has endorsed Mr. Obama, and the two men are close friends.
“ ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ — just words? Just words?” Mr. Patrick said one month before his election. “ ‘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?”
In a telephone interview on Sunday, Mr. Patrick said that he and Mr. Obama first talked about the attacks from their respective rivals last summer, when Mrs. Clinton was raising questions about Mr. Obama’s experience, and that they discussed them again last week.
Both men had anticipated that Mr. Obama’s rhetorical strength would provide a point of criticism. Mr. Patrick said he told Mr. Obama that he should respond to the criticism, and he shared language from his campaign with Mr. Obama’s speechwriters.
Mr. Patrick said he did not believe Mr. Obama should give him credit.
“Who knows who I am? The point is more important than whose argument it is,” said Mr. Patrick, who telephoned The New York Times at the request of the Obama campaign. “It’s a transcendent argument.”
Obama's campaign is scrambling to keep this plagiarism from derailing Obama's momentum.
Plagiarism killed Joe Biden when he ran for president in the 1988 election.
Just because Patrick says it's OK for Obama to lift his "just words" lines, does that mean it's OK?
Would a college professor buy that excuse if a student used lines from another student's essay?
Obama will say that Hillary is going negative, that the charges of plagiarism are typical Washington politics at its worst.
I don't think of it that way.
I'm glad that I'm getting a glimpse into where Obama draws his inspiration.
At the very least, Hillary has given Deval Patrick the credit he is due.
Maybe Patrick is an inspiring enough speaker to become president someday.
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