In last night’s Democratic presidential nomination debate, one of the key highlights that brought the audience to its feet was Senator Hillary Clinton’s dramatic and moving final statement.
But now, in the wake of the issue that the Clinton campaign made about rival Barack Obama lifting parts of another politician’s speech and calling that act plagiarism, some say her final statement has a bit of deja vu.
Americablog says it sounds as if it was lifted from Senator John Edwards and gives examples HERE.
Josh Marshall says it sounds as if it was lifted from Bill Clinton HERE (see 9:46 p.m. entry) and HERE.
Given these questions, the highly positive media buzz on her final statement, the fact that the Obama campaign is bound to start pointing out similarities between her comments and Edwards and Clintons to underscore the fluffiness of the charge against him, and the way her zinger on the plagiarism issue bombed in Austin, it’s likely the plagiarism issue will fade away.
Besides: with the press (and bloggers, who thrive on outrage) having so much fun with the McCain/New York Times battle it would have anyway…
Cartoon by Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com
Read last night’s analysis and weblog opinion roundup on the debate HERE.
UPDATE: Salon’s Walter Shapiro thinks the lapse might not overshadow the power of much of her final statement:
But all the armchair speculations in the world could not prepare viewers for the dignity and emotional power of Clinton’s answer. “I think everybody here knows I’ve lived through some crises and some challenging moments in my life,” she began. “And I am grateful for the support and the prayers of countless Americans. But people often ask me … ‘How do you keep going?’ And I just have to shake my head in wonderment, because with all of the challenges that I’ve had, they are nothing compared to what I see happening in the lives of Americans every single day.”
Then, with the careful geographical precision that is one of her political strengths, Clinton ended this riff by describing a wrenching visit to wounded soldiers at the Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio. It would be melodramatic to believe that a single debate response could rescue a drowning candidate. But Clinton’s Austin answer seemed destined to, at minimum, be remembered as a high point of her campaign.
And then maybe out of carelessness or amnesia, Clinton went a beat too far. Turning to Obama, she said, “Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine … I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that’s what this election should be about.” It was a lovely sentiment, one that would make any presidential debater proud. The only problem was — as the Obama campaign gleefully pointed out in a press release shortly thereafter — that John Edwards had used almost the identical words in a mid-December debate.
It is safe to say that the overhyped plagiarism issue is officially dead, since both Obama and Clinton have now been nabbed for phrase-swiping. But what will be impossible to know for a few days is whether Clinton — by recycling Edwards’ rhetoric — marred her moment. The very tentative guess is that Hillary Clinton still managed to inspire voters in Texas and Ohio to look again, perhaps for the last time, at the candidate whom they are poised to jettison in favor of Barack Obama.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.