Barack Obiden?

By Robert Schlesinger

It may not be about speeches for Hillary Clinton, but for an anonymous campaign running against Barack Obama, they certainly do seem to matter.

According to reports in the NYT and Politico, among others, a rival campaign that did not wish to be named (Gravel’s? Is Kucinich still in it?) was pointing out to reporters that Obama’s speeches were starting to sound suspiciously like those of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Specifically, Obama’s cataloging famous rhetorical moments — “I have a dream!”, “We hold these truths…” etc. — mirrored a refrain Patrick used to deflect attacks in his 2006 gubernatorial campaign similar to those Sen. Clinton is leveling against Obama this year (“Speeches don’t put food on the table,” etc.).

I discuss the philosophical questions about who owns or gets credit for a speech or phrase over at Huffington Post, but there are also practical issues here. The “rival campaign” that brought all of this to reporters’ attention had less to do with connecting Obama to Patrick than to Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden. Biden was a promising presidential candidate in the fall of 1987 when his habit of lifting language from other pols’ speeches crippled his campaign.

As Time put it then:

what most voters are more likely to remember was the endless TV sequences of Biden’s words on the campaign trail juxtaposed with almost identical oratory coming from the mouth of Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and British Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock. English teachers in New Hampshire high schools were soon using Biden as the bad example in lessons on the evils of plagiarism.

The Clinton campaign, for one, needs something to shake up the race as Obama is opening a narrow but undeniable lead. A Biden-esque plagiarism scandal would have been a double-boon not simply as a negative story about Obama but one undercutting his biggest strength. The Obama campaign appears to have successfully parried the thrust, however, as Patrick told the Times that yes, he had advised Obama on handling the words-don’t-matter attacks.