Biden and "Plagiarism"

In 1988, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) was considered a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination during the year leading up to the Iowa caucuses. On the campaign trail, Biden often paraphrased a speech by eloquent British Labour politician Neil Kinnock:

KINNOCK: Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.

BIDEN: Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines in northeast Pennsylvania and who would come up after twelve hours and play football for four hours? It's not because they weren't as smart. It's not because they didn’t work as hard. It was because there was no platform on which they could stand.

Whenever Biden used the speech, he cited Kinnock, and the emotional power of the words were magnified by the fact that the words could apply to an American Senator and a British MP along with many people in the audience. But one time, Biden forgot to cite Kinnock when he read the speech, and Michael Dukakis's campaign slammed him for it. Shortly thereafter, someone dug up an old record showing that Biden had been accused of plagiarism in law school, though conveniently ignoring the fact that Biden had been cleared of any wrongdoing. By the time Biden refuted both charges, the damage had been done, and Biden had been forced to quit the race.

Now Biden is running for President again, and people are bringing up the charges again. As in 1988, what is often getting lost in the cacophony is the fact that neither of the plagiarism charges had any real merit.

Citing or using key phrases coined by others is incredibly common in politics. It's actually pretty tough to come across a political speech where the candidate doesn't quote or paraphrase someone else - and often it is done without citing the original author of the phrase. Howard Dean didn't cite Voltaire when he told Ralph Nader that we can't let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Bill Clinton often paraphrased Truman and JFK in his speeches without mentioning the source. People generally forget that the portions of the Kinnock speech which Biden used were, in fact, true of Biden's own life. He simply forgot to say "As Neil Kinnock said..." once, and was smeared into the ground for it.

Bringing up the charges of plagiarism that had been leveled against Biden while he was in law school was no less silly, since Biden was cleared of wrongdoing by both the Syracuse Law School and the Delaware Bar Association. Treating a man who was found innocent of a charge as if he was guilty is patently absurd. The irony is that the two plagiarism-related charges which were leveled against Biden were both trumped up, but most people acted if two illegitimate charges are just as good as one legitimate charge.

I admit to having a pro-Biden bias. I don't deny that he is very cozy with the credit card companies from his home state, and I have more than enough personal debt to sympathize with people who are angered by this connection. But among all the politicians that I have met personally, Joe Biden was the only one who came off as genuine. He asked me questions and was seriously interested in my life. After I had joked about the amount of debt that I had, he mentioned some recent changes that had been made in federal financial aid programs, which kicked my mind into gear about consolidating my student loans (which has saved me thousands of dollars in debt). All Senators this side of megamillionaires like Herb Kohl and Jay Rockefeller have some friends in the business world who are politically unattractive, but at least Biden's advocacy is on behalf of an industry that is important to his home state's economy (MBNA is based in Wilmington). And more importantly, I've never met another politican who actually seemed to be interested in solving the problems of a lowly citizen like me.

I'll admit that he talks too much. But who in the world of politics doesn't? The important thing isn't how much you talk, but whether you know what you're talking about. In that regard, Biden is a walking encyclopedia of both domestic and foreign policy, and is one of the few people in D.C. who seems to have their head on straight about what is going on in Iraq and how to deal with the situation there. If people have grievances with Biden on one issue or another, that is obviously legitimate. But we should not disqualify one of the most candid and thoughtful people in American politics over a 20-year old charge of plagiarism that's already been debunked.


Note: Comments should be working again...sorry, I don't know how they ever got turned off.