Recent claims of plagiarism against Joe Biden reveal the hollowness of the former vice president’s candidacy as much as they show his indifference to accuracy and professional standards.
The former vice president is facing accusations of plagiarism after it was noticed that numerous sections of his policy proposal had been lifted wholesale from materials produced by environmental groups, liberal media outlets, and other sources. Apparently, Biden couldn’t be bothered to have his staff paraphrase the work of climate activists when they copied-and-pasted it into his new climate plan.
Considering that plagiarism charges forced Biden to withdraw from the 1988 presidential race after reporters uncovered that he had copied whole sections of his speeches from British politician Neil Kinnock, he really should have known better. This was around the same time Biden acknowledged that he had plagiarized an article he wrote during law school in 1968, and tried to defuse the scandal by claiming that his offense was not “malevolent.” Like he’s doing now in response to criticism of the plagiarism in his climate plan, Biden contended that he had merely been a little sloppy with his citations because he didn’t understand the importance of citing his sources carefully.CARTOONS | AF Branco
View CartoonAfter all the pain his plagiarism has caused him over the years, how could Biden still be making the same supposed mistake a full half-century later?
Biden’s campaign is trying to write the incident off as a minor oversight, claiming it was just a matter of some citations that “were inadvertently left out of the final version.” They want to turn this into an academic debate over the definition of plagiarism, because if people stop to reflect on its real significance, they’ll realize that the problem has less to do with the plagiarism itself than what it reveals about Biden’s utter lack of vision, thoughtfulness, or leadership.
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04.23.2024