Joe Biden: Famous serial plagiarist disqualified in 1988

DAVID GREENBERG

A professor of history and media studies at Rutgers University

Obama blew it.

He dragged things out for days, teasingly dropping hints and misdirection. This over-the-top coyness damages him three ways.

First, it feeds the idea that he's a narcissist. It encourages voters to picture him and his inner circle relishing the fevered speculation they generated.

Second, after so much hype, the choice could only disappoint. And really, we waited three months for Joe Biden?

Third, the protracted process short-sightedly allowed Hillary Clinton's name to reenter the veepstakes -- a move bound to further alienate her backers when she wasn't selected. Once the conjecture about her became rampant, Obama should have doused it instantly and unambiguously.

Apart from Clinton, Biden was the best choice of the finalists. His foreign policy knowledge and instincts will serve Obama well, as the two men's first reactions to the Georgia crisis showed.

But it cannot escape comment that Biden is a serial plagiarist.

Few remember the details surrounding the many incidents of word-theft, dating to law school, that disqualified him from the 1988 presidential race. Biden lifted words from Bobby Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and the British politician Neil Kinnock; in the last instance, Biden stole autobiographical material, in effect making false claims about his own life.That suggests something pathological about Biden, for wholesale deceptions aren't easily explained away. The media opted not to reopen those incidents when Biden ran for president this year, but they should have. Character doesn't change easily; something troubling may still lurk beneath the smile and the logorrhea.


Joe Biden for president of the pathological liars club.