With several top-notch candidates, and some of the best speechwriters in the business working tirelessly on their behalf, it’s only natural for a campaign staffer to hear a rival give a good speech and think, “What a great line! Why didn’t I think of that?”<\/p>\n
It leads to a hard-to-resist temptation: “borrow” the line and hope no one notices.<\/p>\n
Of course, all of this is frowned upon. It’s a bit like stand-up comedy — everyone knows it happens all the time, but that doesn’t make it OK.<\/p>\n
I thought of this after seeing that Hillary Clinton is apparently using some familiar phrases<\/a>, usually associated with one of her rivals.<\/p>\n One of the things that struck me when I first saw Hillary on the stump six weeks ago … was how many of her best lines were, if not cribbed, then at least inspired by other candidates. At one point, for example, she said she wasn’t running to be “president of the states that voted for Democrats,” she was running to be “president of the United States,” which sounded a lot like Obama’s line about not pitting red America against blue America, but being president of the United States of America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n True, but that’s at least a little subtle. This one isn’t<\/a>.<\/p>\n “We are fired up and we are ready to go because we know America is ready for change and the process starts right here in Iowa.”<\/p>\n In Davenport, Iowa, those words escaped the barriers of a tired Hillary Clinton’s teeth. Without irony.<\/p>\n That phrase is associated with Barack Obama. Obama borrows it from a woman in South Carolina who helped remind him what was important in life. It’s the signature, in fact, of Obama’s close.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ouch. That’s pretty bad. * “New Clinton Iowa radio ad has voter voice saying she is the candidate of ‘hope<\/a>.'”<\/p>\n
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\nI hate to think there’s a pattern here, but there are quite a few examples:<\/p>\n