Words So Nice They Should Be Spoken Twice: Lifting lines from Patrick, Edwards and Bob the Builder

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Words So Nice They Should Be Spoken Twice
By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, February 20, 2008; Page A02

....In recent days, he has been exposed as a high-risk borrower, accused of taking everything from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's "just words" riff on the power of oratory to Bob the Builder's refrain for preschoolers, "Yes, we can!"...And he borrowed anew on Tuesday at an outdoor rally in San Antonio -- this time from former rival John Edwards. Criticizing pharmaceutical companies' ads, Obama joked: "You know those ads where people are running around the fields, you know, they're smiling, you don't know what the drug is for?" Compare that with this staple of the 2004 Edwards stump speech: "I love the ads. Buy their medicine, take it, and the next day you and your spouse will be skipping through the fields."...

None of the rhetorical loans Obama has taken out has been as serious as, say, Joe Biden's wholesale theft of British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock's words in the 1988 presidential race. But they add to the impression, encouraged by both Clinton and expected Republican nominee John McCain, that Obama is but an airy souffle....

Obama's latest trouble came Saturday when, responding to Clinton's criticism that he is all talk, the candidate borrowed, nearly word for word and without attribution, a favorite passage from Patrick....Potentially more objectionable are the many lines Obama has lifted from Edwards, whose campaign compiled a list of the offenses before the candidate dropped out of the race. Here's Obama's announcement speech in February 2007: "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change." Compare that with Edwards's 2003 announcement speech: "I haven't spent most of my life in politics, but I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change Washington."

Some of the common phrases are too cliched to qualify for lending privileges, but others seem to be more than coincidence. "We need a president not afraid to use the word 'union,'" Edwards told an audience of steelworkers in July 2007. "We need a president . . . who is not afraid to mention unions," Obama said a month later. Edwards, accepting the party's vice presidential nomination in 2004, said, "Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth." Obama, in turn, has been heard to say, "We shouldn't just be respecting wealth in this country, we should be respecting work."

The likely nexus: top Obama adviser David Axelrod, who played a similar role for Patrick in 2006 and for Edwards in 2004. That, in turn, may explain why both Patrick and Obama adopted the signature phrase of animated handyman Bob the Builder. "Can we build it? Yes, we can! Can we fix it? Yes, we can!"...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/19/AR2008021902342.html?nav%3Dhcmodule&sub=AR

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Obama is great at giving somebody else's speeches.

[tridim]

2. Pssst. The plagiarism attack didn't work. nt

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. It's a fact