Does Biden's plagiaristic past preempt his presidential prospects?

InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds writes today of Joe Biden's non-coy declaration of his intention to seek the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008 (hyperlinks in original):

WITH JOE BIDEN RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT, we're likely to hear more about the rather lame plagiarism scandal that sunk him in 1988.

You can read a defense of Biden in that role, from my book (with Peter Morgan), The Appearance of Impropriety, if you like. I think that Biden was shafted by the Dukakis campaign, with help from the press, and that the whole flap was silly.

Lest you think Prof. Reynolds is a Biden supporter, I must also note that his post goes on to argue that Sen. Biden's candidacy "ought to have been sunk" based on substantive positions he's taken on legislation in the past and his performance as a senator. However, having not only read the chapter excerpt from his and Mr. Morgan's book that Prof. Reynolds links, but having actually bought and read the entire book, I felt semi-qualified to respond to his bit of instapunditry on the specific topic of Sen. Biden's plagiaristic history.

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To round out my research before counterposting, I turned to every blogger's best online friend. And in an ironic coincidence, I promptly found one online resource — an opinion piece written by a journalist-pundit whom I like and respect, and with whom I've occasionally traded emails — which appears to have incorporated, without attribution, a one-paragraph description of Sen. Biden's 1988 campaign implosion that appeared in a second online resource (apparently published some years earlier) almost word-for-word.

Was this more or less consequential than Sen. Biden's well-publicized lifting of campaign speech language from British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock and other, previous examples of Sen. Biden's "stressless scholarship"? I admit to a pre-existing bias, but I would still argue that it's substantially less consequential. In all likelihood, my pundit friend had begun his writing by gathering background facts on the internet; perhaps he cut-and-pasted the paragraph into his notes, lost track of the original source, and/or forgot that it was a direct cut-and-paste, rather than his own summarization, when that paragraph made its way into the factual predicate of his own opinion essay. The facts summarized in that paragraph are essentially undisputed; the language used is unremarkable, comprising crisp but not soaring prose. The essay ought to be judged based on the merit of the opinions expressed, and its writer isn't running for president.

And yet: That pundit's reputation and credibility will inevitably affect the way his opinions are received and perceived. His reputation and credibility are in part based upon his record for accuracy and integrity. So yes, he should have included an attribution, or else have been more careful not to lift even this noncontroversial material wholesale. It appears that he was, at a minimum, very sloppy on this occasion. And sloppy may be excusable, but it's still not good.

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I agree with a great deal of the Morgan-Reynolds book — a central premise of which is that the more-or-less continuous post-Watergate frenzy over public ethics has unjustly flattened the moral landscape and led to the trivialization of genuinely bad acts. I also agree — and it would be hard for anyone to dispute, I think — that Sen. Biden's 1988 campaign was the victim of the Dukakis campaign's very hardball primary politics. And even had he not been caught in them, Sen. Biden's  bad acts in lifting some moderately well-crafted phrases from Kinnock's campaign speeches into his own, or in lifting five pages from a law review article into his own law school class submission, or his exaggeration of his academic record weren't going to actually win him any elections, or confer any substantial advantage upon him as a politician. Yes, there's a pattern; but it's a pattern of small-scale thefts, not grand larceny. And I emphatically agree with Prof. Reynolds that Sen. Biden's substantive record and political positions more than suffice to make him an unattractive candidate (although in every instance, he's been pandering to a constituency who will almost by definition disagree with that assessment).

Still, I can't quite swallow Prof. Reynolds' near-dismissal in his post today of Sen. Biden's past pattern of plagiarism. Rather, I think that the pattern does indeed speak to Sen. Biden's fitness for high public office. But it's not relevant because it shows that he is irredeemably craven or immoral. No, the real problem with Biden is not the alleged sin but the obvious stupidity it bespoke.

That last sentence I've lifted almost verbatim from the Morgan-Reynolds book (at page 146), by the way. (The "bespoke" is my own; Glenn's rarely that stuffy.) And to make my rhetorical point — here, that Prof. Reynolds himself has previously recognized the same significance of the Biden plagiarism record for which I'm arguing here — I absolutely must include an attribution!

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When I include that attribution, a diligent scholar can learn that Messrs. Morgan and Reynolds were, in turn, only quoting — with full and footnoted attribution — a Chicago Tribune column from September 1987 by Jon Margolis entitled "For Joe Biden, as with Hart, It's the Stupidity that Hurts." That diligent scholar will further find that in my near-quote of the sentence in which Morgan and Reynolds quoted Mr. Margolis, I've omitted an important qualifier: The full sentence written by Morgan and Reynolds reads (anally compulsive bracketed comma mine, but double quotation marks and footnote superscript in original):

The real problem with Biden, we were told[,] "is not the alleged sin but the obvious stupidity."²¹

So in fact, the sentiment I've attributed to Prof. Reynolds — arguably inconsistent with his post today — isn't necessarily attributable to him or to Mr. Morgan, but to Mr. Margolis!

When writing about ideas, and in particular other people's ideas, then, proper attribution can become very important indeed — not just so that credit is given when due, but so that conflations or misstatements can be identified and exposed more readily. When Prof. Reynolds is writing — whether for his InstaPundit blog or his MSNBC column, or for a popular press book, or for a law review article — his intellectual honesty obliges him to compulsive attribution. And I feel the same compulsion to "show my own work" and distinguish it from others' work; as I've written before, I think this instinct and habit is commendably common among bloggers.\^*/

I don't expect politicians to necessarily share in that compulsion, much less to adhere meticulously to standards for academic publications. But I, and I think the American public, do insist that presidential-caliber politicians not be consistently, self-destructively stupid in the minor transgressions that we might otherwise forgive.

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\^*/Then why, you may ask, have I not linked the two online sources I referenced in the beginning of this essay? It's because I'm speculating, and not making an accusation; I could be mistaken; and I've emailed the pundit in question, with a link to this post, to point out the similarities in the language in case he has an explanation that hasn't occurred to me.

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UPDATE (Mon Jun 20 @ 5:20pm): The unnamed pundit referenced near the beginning of this essay responded promptly and graciously to my emailed inquiry. He acknowledged the irony not only of his own failure to credit his original source in writing about Biden's plagiarism, but additional irony from the fact that his source was someone with whom he was well acquainted and whom he'd have been very happy to credit. He agrees that he was indeed sloppy with respect to the paragraph in question, and I'm quite certain that his self-chastisement now that it's been brought privately to his attention will prompt him to avoid this particular sin in the future. Given all that and the inconsequential content of this particular paragraph, my own judgment is that no good purpose would be served by my being more specific as to names or providing direct links. If he should ever run for president, however ....