Assistance to correct Misstatement, please.

[elleng]

I'd like to write to clarify the facts here, as it appears that Fallows/The Atlantic has the story wrong:

"I respect and admire Joe Biden, but his "similar" case in 1988 was completely different, and actually bad. On the stump he was telling someone else's personal story -- as it happened, Neil Kinnock's -- as if it were his own. That is not the kind of detail you just swap into and out of a stump speech to make it more powerful."

http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/on_plagiarism.php

Didn't happen that way, right? Anyone have a clear explanation, including Dukakis/Sasso,at hand?

Thanks.

[Eurobabe]

1. Check the blurb on Wikipedia

"In 1987, Joe Biden ran as a Democratic presidential candidate. When the campaign began, he was considered a frontrunner because of his moderate image. However, the campaign ended when he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the British Labour Party. Though Biden had correctly credited the original author in all speeches but one, the one where he failed to make mention of the originator was caught on video. In the video Biden is filmed repeating a stump speech by Kinnock, with only minor modifications. “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife . . . is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? . . . Is it because they didn't work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It's because they didn't have a platform on which to stand.” After Biden withdrew from the race it was learned that he had correctly credited Kinnock on other occasions. He failed to do so, however, in the Iowa speech that was recorded and distributed to reporters (with a parallel video of Kinnock) by aides to Michael Dukakis, the eventual nominee. Dukakis fired John Sasso, his campaign manager and long-time Chief of Staff, but Biden's campaign could not recover."

Wiki Biden, you've seen this already, I am sure.

More here:

Kinnock (original)

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

I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college?

Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? . . . No, it's not because they weren't as smart. It's not because they didn't work as hard. It's because they didn't have a platform upon which to stand . . .

It turned out Biden had also borrowed passages from old campaign speeches by Robert Kennedy and had inflated his academic record. But oratory has a long tradition of borrowing and even "heavy lifting," as speechwriters call it, so Biden stayed alive in the presidential race. The last straw, however, came when it turned out that twenty years earlier Biden had received a failing grade in a law school course for plagiarizing a legal article (he'd given a single footnote while lifting five full pages from the article). Biden said he'd been unaware of the appropriate standards for legal briefs, but the public was unimpressed. His campaign collapsed and he withdrew from the race.

http://nutsandbolts.washcoll.edu/plagiarism.html

[karynnj]

4. Hi Biden people - here is something that can be usedto put the law school thing

in perspective. Even highly respected historians - with editors and staff etc have inadvertently done what he is said to have done - it is reasonable to think that he thought the single footnote sufficed. (I'm younger than Biden, but I can tell you that my kids (now teens and young 20s got a better education on how to do research papers than we did.)

Here is a link that speaks of 2 very esteemed historians would were caught:
"Sometimes the question is one of proper attribution. In January 2002, two highly regarded historians, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, were accused of plagiarism in The Weekly Standard. The magazine revealed that Ambrose (who died in October 2002) took passages from another author's work and used them in his 2001 book The Wild Blue, while Goodwin used passages from several authors in her 1987 book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. Both authors apologized, acknowledging that they had erred and adding that their failure to provide proper attribution was completely inadvertent. Goodwin went so far as to address her mistakes in an essay in Time magazine. They agreed to correct the problem in future editions of the books in question. While some of their colleagues accepted the explanation, others questioned whether authors of such talent and prominence were in fact being disingenuous considering that both had borrowed numerous passages, not just one or two."
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Plagarism

PS I was here to see if there was more Pakistan stuff - apparently it seems to be covered only here and on the JK board - and sinks immediately on the common boards.

[Muttocracy]

2. biden on NPR discussing it last year

I'm sure it's covered in his book too but I haven't gotten it yet. Heard this last August:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12389154

some snips (starts with interviewer Steve Inskeep, alternating paragraps are Biden)

......

You did end up, at a relatively young age – mid-40's – running for president the first time…

Yes.

…and being forced to withdraw from that race because of news stories about quoting someone without attribution in a speech, because of quoting without proper footnoting in a paper when you were in law school. I wonder if, regardless of whether you consider yourself innocent or guilty as charged, whether you think it's appropriate that people look into the biographical incidents and search out the character of presidential candidates, as opposed to their positions.

Totally appropriate.

It was appropriate for people to look into that.

It was appropriate to look into it. But I wish they had looked into it. They didn't look into it. And had they looked into it, they may have reached a – and some did ultimately – a more balanced conclusion. But the bottom line was, I made a mistake. I did not, in the debate in Iowa, attribute what I said. And it was born out of my arrogance. I didn't prepare for the debate. It was stupid. I didn't deserve to president. I didn't deserve to be president just based on the Richter scale of 'Was I tough enough and did I understand the process?'

Are you saying the system worked…?

The system worked.

…in shoving you out before you even got to the election year?

In a strange way, it did work.

Has it been hard to wait 20 years for another shot at the White House?

No. As a matter of fact, I didn't make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years. And I just focused almost exclusively on my initiatives for national crime legislation, foreign policy issues…

You weren't waiting for another chance?

No. And what I finally decided this time – and I had no intention of running, I worked very hard for John Kerry…

In 2004.

In 2004. And after John lost, which was a real kick in the head, I realized that if I really meant and cared about as deeply as I do the issues I care about, I wasn't going to be able to affect them very much in the Senate.

...


Last question, Senator. You said that 20 years ago, you didn't deserve to be president. Do you now?

Yes. I'm the single most qualified person in either party on the problems that most urgently face America. When this president is constitutionally required to hand off power to the next president, he will leave the next president with virtually no margin for error. This is no place for on-the-job learning.

[mjg540]

5. DID YOU TAKE NOTE OF THE FINAL SENTENCE?

NOTE:
Yes. I'm the single most qualified person in either party on the problems that most urgently face America. When this president is constitutionally required to hand off power to the next president, he will leave the next president with virtually no margin for error. This is no place for on-the-job learning.

Only in America can you be elected to the highest position in the land with absolutely no experience!

Think about it....
Let's assume you run a multi trillion dollar business and you have to leave a complete stranger in charge of it. Not only are you entrusting the economic side of your business, but you also have left your children's future in his/her hands. He/she will be in charge of the most powerful military in the world and hold their very lives in the palm of his/her hands.

Now tell me, what is it that you would need/want to know before handing over your company....

That's what we will be doing in November....have we done our homework?

[Muttocracy]

6. oh, yes, experience is a huge issue for me and I'm sure all other Biden supporters here

Unfortunately, no, people weren't doing their homework until they had already kicked out the most experienced candidates. Edward, Clinton, and Obama were the LEAST experienced. (See my sig line quote from David Brooks). I've not warmed to any of them because of it. Clinton or Obama in office would make serious missteps based on their lack of experience. Or, like GW today, more experienced people not on the ballot will be the ones really making the decisions.

While most Dems were playing American Idol with the 3 low-experience choices, the Repubs. who were completely unhappy with their choice of candidates still managed to get their act together and nominate their most experienced one, which will be something they can use against us in a few months. I am very afraid of some terrorist attack / international event / even sudden happy military event that will swing things toward McCain. That wouldn't have worked against Biden.

[jillan]

3. From his book -

what he said was that he heard Kinnock on tv and found himself agreeing with everything he was saying. He integrated parts of Kinnock's speech in his own, always crediting him. The nite of the Iowa debate he didn't credit Kinnock. After the debate he mentioned it to his staff, and they told him not to worry about it. John Sasso was there (worked for Dukakis) and taped it. He gave the tape to Maureen Dowd and she ran with it in the press.

To me, it is all very similar - except that Biden and Kinnock were not friends.
Biden made an honest mistake. It's been kind of hard for me to relive all of this over the last couple of days.

[Muttocracy]

7. thanks for that

Biden has not always been well-served by his campaign staff.

[elleng]

8. MOST aren't,

I think, JoeIs; opportunists.