From Melania to Hillary, political tradition of cribbing quotes is thriving
鈥淎merica is great because America is good,鈥� said Hillary Clinton during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.听 Immediately, her critics went on social media to accuse her of plagiarizing Alexis deTocqueville, French author of the 19th-century classic, "Democracy in America." 聽But Tocqueville聽.听
Various forms of the spurious quotation (often including such purple prose as 鈥減ulpits aflame with righteousness鈥�) have been circulating for decades.听, except that we do know that these words appear nowhere in Tocqueville鈥檚 works. Nevertheless, politicians of all stripes have long been fond of using the lines, usually with the false attribution. Indeed, one repeat offender was none other than President Bill Clinton. He credited Tocqueville with saying 鈥淎merica is great鈥澛犅犫�� including the video that preceded his own acceptance speech at the 1996 Democratic convention.
It鈥檚 purely a guess, but it seems plausible that Mrs. Clinton or her speechwriter heard the phrase in that video and decided to recycle it聽20 years later. One cannot charge her with plagiarizing Tocqueville since the latter didn鈥檛 write it in the first place. But was she plagiarizing her husband? Maybe it doesn鈥檛 count if it鈥檚 all in the family, or perhaps the phrase is so short and familiar that it comes under the heading of 鈥�.鈥� I will leave such judgments to the experts in literary ethics.
The Tocqueville tussle 鈥� which coincidentally continued the next day on聽聽鈥� was not the only such kerfuffle of recent days. At the GOP convention, Melania Trump gave a speech that echoed a bit of rhetoric from Michelle Obama. Whether intentional or not, it was the kind of 鈥渂orrowing鈥� that would have triggered disciplinary action if聽.
Apparently stung by the criticism of his stepmom, Donald Trump Jr. tried to counterattack. After President Obama spoke聽on Wednesday聽night,聽: 鈥淚'm honored that POTUS would plagiarize a line from my speech last week. Where's the outrage?鈥� Both speeches contained variations of the sentence 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not the America I know.鈥� The problem for Mr. Trump,聽, is that Obama has been using that saying for years. And it didn鈥檛 start with the president either: Mr. Blake traced it as far back as a federal official鈥檚 National Press Club speech in 1989.
Trump Jr.听聽that he had just been kidding 鈥� as his father did after he seemed to invite Russian cyber-hacking.
Political cribbing and misattribution are hardly unique to the summer of 2016,聽聽when he published a book containing a number of false quotations. (The book did accurately quote a passage from Ronald Reagan鈥檚 1983 鈥淓vil Empire鈥� speech 鈥� but that passage in turn contained the spurious Tocqueville quotation.) In remarks to Democratic members of Congress in 2010, Mr. Obama quoted Abraham Lincoln: 鈥淚 am not bound to win, but I'm bound to be true. I'm not bound to succeed, but I'm bound to live up to what light I have.鈥� As with so many Lincoln 鈥渜uotations,鈥澛�.
The World Wide Web deserves much of the blame. The ease of copying and pasting is an ever-present invitation to plagiarism. Because search engines deliver information so readily, writers might not take the time to double-check its accuracy, especially with quotations that seem so apt for the occasion.
: 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 believe everything you read on the Internet 鈥� Abe Lincoln, 1868鈥�
