Who Needs Karl Rove?

We have been told Barack Obama is singularly brilliant, articulate, eloquent. We have been told that he is nuanced; deep. One journalist even suggested Barack Obama is more highly evolved than the rest of us. But what have we found? We have found someone blandly human, and not particularly original.

I made a mistake earlier this year when I praised the concession speech Barack Obama delivered the night he lost the New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton. I was stunned by his eloquence and force; I said that Hillary Clinton could never give a speech half as inspiring, even in her dreams.

In all honesty, I thought Barack Obama's speech that night was done extemporaneously. The TV feed I was watching did not show that he was reading it; there was no wide shot of his teleprompters guiding him through his "Yes We Can" speech, the one that even became something of a musical hit on YouTube. To my consternation, I had to admit that I was mistaken, and that I had been fooled (by my own hopefulness, perhaps). Anyone can be eloquent if he or she knows how to read. (And while I am thinking of it, what sort of person READS a concession speech after losing a tiny state primary?)

Now comes news that Barack Obama actually plagiarized -- and it is plagiarism -- a Tom Toles cartoon. Let me be generous and assume that Mr. Obama and Mr. Toles had worked out a deal where Mr. Obama could use Toles' riff without attribution. (There is a rather half-baked explanation here.) OK. Fine. Let's assume all is explained away. What remains? Two things, really:

1. Barack Obama is passing off someone else's words as his own. The Man Who Everyone Loves But No One Really Knows has now estranged himself to us: we don't know where someone else ends and where Barack Obama begins. He loses his identity the second he loses our trust.
   
2. Barack Obama has lost his most precious commodities, credibility and authenticity. Hence, he has lost even his extemporaneous eloquence we've heard so much about: He has given too much away, and we now see that even what looks spontaneous is rehearsed, memorized, pre-fabricated. Barack Obama did not just pull out of thin air, or from the inscrutably deep synapses of his brain, Tom Toles' exact, or near exact, words. No. He had read them, memorized them. And he told himself or, more likely, was told by others, that he could pass them off as his own. But even if there was no such internal conspiracy between his own inner selves or within his inner circle, there is no doubt that what seems so authentically off-the-cuff can never be trusted again. When we thought he was being clever and profound, he was merely reciting, copying, imitating. At best, the president who would be king is now known for pastiche.
   

The irony, of course, is that nothing about the Barack Obama slowdown has come from outside him: there is nothing "Karl Rove" about Mr. Obama's bad news. He has become his own worst enemy. Yes, I think that a shift in the polls against him could be traced to revelations of clear pro-Democrat bias evident in the media when the media chose to ignore John Edwards' extra-marital affair and his therefore hubristic bid for the White House; the media were profoundly derelict in their duties, and enough people were disabused of their hopes the media played fair that such disillusioned folks were affecting the polls. Irrespective of that bad bit of luck, Senator Obama has done himself no favors. He has blundered, faltered; his gaffes are his own.

Contrary to what I asserted in an earlier post, this is far, far worse than misspelling potato. Actually, spelling potato is probably more difficult than simply saying, "I saw in a Tom Toles' cartoon earlier this week..."

©2008. All Rights Reserved.

Cover Up? Plagiarize A Cartoon And You Become A Cartoon

I am wondering if we are watching the greatest political meltdown in American history. I am also wondering if the "Lipstick Defense" is a cover-up.

James Taranto simply passes over something I find absolutely incredible, especially since accusations of plagiarism have been hurled at both Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the past.

Please read (right now) the monologue bubble to Tom Toles' September 5 cartoon in the Washington Post. And then read what Barack Obama said FOUR DAYS later (as printed in the LA Times):

"John McCain says he's about change too...So I guess his whole angle is: Watch out, George Bush -- except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics, we're really going to shake things up in Washington.

"That's not change. That's just calling the same thing something different. But you can put lipstick on a pig, it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, and it's still going to stink after eight years." [emphasis mine]

Pretty amazing, huh? How did this go unnoticed? Why did this go unnoticed? Did Sen. Obama preface or end his remarks with due attribution to Tom Toles? I believe he did not.

Seriously, I have never seen such a swift and immediate meltdown. I did not think the lipstick remark could be all that devastating to Barack Obama. Alas, it seems it highlighted a part of his speech that he would have liked to conceal. How ironic that he would have used lipstick to highlight his apparent plagiarism.

Call it the Year of Cosmetics, when Lipstick on a Cover Girl with Pluck was used as a Highlighter on a story you can't Make-Up. Some have tried to Gloss it over, especially to keep the Base happy. Some have no doubt Blushed, while others will hardly bat an Eyelash -- unless they hear of a Cover-up or Concealer. It's the year of the pig, or what the Pigment.

Mascara Palin has got them seeing Red States everywhere.

©2008. All rights reserved.

Obama's "Plagiarism": Shouldn't This Matter?

[This post first appeared at RedState.com on 2.20.08, with slight differences.]

Barack Obama's alleged plagiarism of Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick's 2006 campaign speech has been rather easily dismissed by many pundits, which surprises me. On Monday night's "The Special Report with Brit Hume", for example, The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer snickered at the notion that Mr. Obama's failure to make due attribution was at all significant. Others I've listened to have also been rather dismissive.

Thankfully yesterday, James Taranto, the master of the brilliant "Best Of The Web Today" at the Wall Street Journal's website, at least treated Mr. Obama's deed -- or misdeed -- with more than a cupful of glee. Mr. Taranto said that what some folks failed to notice was that Mr. Obama (and Mr. Patrick) defended himself against the charge that he was all wind and no sail by giving us more wind. That the Clinton campaign failed to properly jump on this Mr. Taranto also notes; he avers that Mr. Obama's critics failed to quickly and effectively make the case that Mr. Obama's reliance on someone else's words proves that he is -- as the Clinton campaign has charged -- something of a breeze (a "fresh, clean" one, no doubt, in Joe Biden's mind).

(ALERT: Response from the Obama campaign: "The wind bloweth wheresoever it willeth. So it is every one who is born of the spirit ...")

But why would I bother here with this story? Surely it has nothing to do with me; surely we are outside this discussion, no?

First, I believe it is important because of what smacks of a double standard. Call me paranoid, or simply call me annoyed; but my sense is that if Mr. Obama was a conservative, we'd never hear the end of this story. If Mr. McCain lifted words from anyone, there would be countless discussions about his competency, trustworthiness, or moral authority.

Second, I believe it is important because of what is quite clearly overlooked, namely, that the Clinton campaign has again injected the race card into the presidential race. Surely you've heard of that other plagiarist, Martin Luther King Jr., no? You know, the one who apparently fudged most of his doctoral thesis at Boston University or lifted major portions of others' speeches for use in his own? No doubt the Clintons are disparaging Mr. Obama's penchant for borrowing phrases when they throw out the key word "plagiarist"; but they are also suggesting, are they not, that "black" leaders have a history of doing this?

Imagine if a conservative opponent to Mr. Obama had made a similar sort of accusation against him. "Racist" would be somewhere in every (related) headline in every major paper in the country ... for days. But since the accusation comes from a Democratic campaign, well, the issue can be largely ignored.

Finally, what also concerns me is that this sort of thing reveals the man behind the curtain: who we often elect is really the speech writer we never see. I recently read former George W. Bush speech writer Michael Gerson's book, Heroic Conservatism; the book made clear to me that Mr. Gerson was at times far more presidential than any president. This aspect of politics is troubling for what it suggests, namely, that who we see is more often a front man (or woman); more phantom than fact. (It is noted that among Mr. Obama's chief advisors is Deval Patrick's former campaign manager, indicating that Mr. Obama is perhaps not his own man.)

I am quick to accept Mr. Obama's explanation of what transpired: that he and Mr. Patrick are friends (they are) and that they exchange and share ideas all the time. I also accept that Mr. Obama admits that he should have given Mr. Patrick credit (though in a speech like Mr. Obama's, that can be somewhat awkward). What I fail to accept without some struggle is that this whole thing is rather insignificant.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.