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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
FEMALE_1: Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your host, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian, and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hello, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, today, I feel like ripping off every single good idea you've ever had in claiming it as mine. Would you have a problem with that?
N. Rodgers: Well, considering I don't have any good ideas, I probably will be fine. But it's going to make you look pretty lame. That's what you have to be careful. See, you're ripping off my ideas. You should be ripping off Judy Twigs ideas. If you're going to steal somebody's work, pick the right person. You either need to pick somebody super obscure, or you need to pick somebody super brilliant.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, sometimes Nia and I off recording before we start recording a particular episode. We'll script the beginning. For this episode, which is about government officials who have plagiarized, I told Nia, that I had an idea, and that I just asked her to go with me as I presented the opening remarks. She did so in a way that particularly pleased me.
N. Rodgers: We don't usually do that, actually, usually, we just start. But sometimes we do set ourselves up.
J. Aughenbaugh: But today's podcast episode, listeners is as I just mentioned, about government officials who have plagiarized.
N. Rodgers: What's plagiarism?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, plagiarism is basically the idea that you have taken somebody else's thoughts, creations, formulas, and claim them as your own. You don't give the other person credit for initially creating those thoughts, those words, those lyrics.
N. Rodgers: It happens in music quite a bit, doesn't it? Your song sounds just like Elvis' song, and his estate sues you but it also happens a lot in written academic work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Work. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Tends to happen a lot, and some of it's accidental. People forget to cite someone. They mean to do that, and then they forget to do that, and then they are accused of plagiarism or worse.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and it does reflect, particularly within the academy. That even if you make the occasional mistake, you've been lazy.
N. Rodgers: If your defense is going to be, Oh, I forgot, then people are going to go, Oh, well, then you're a lazy slop, you're not a plagiarist. I'm not entirely certain which is a whole lot better better at that point, but at least you wouldn't be booted from your job. We do see people for instance in universities.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Lots of universities, if you are a professor or if you are a dean or if you are a president of a university and you are accused of plagiarism, you will probably lose your job.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and we've seen some notable examples of that of recent vintage, former Harvard President Gay.
N. Rodgers: She was accused?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Not only did she get criticism for how the university handled the protests of last fall and spring on that campus, but there were some conservative interest groups who then began to peruse her published works, and found instances of where she was according to her, just sloppy.
N. Rodgers: Which does happen.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it does happen.
N. Rodgers: But we can't say that that's inaccurate. We don't know what her intent was. But the way you get around this is to cite your source. By the bye, that is a lovely thing for you to say to anybody who makes a statement about something. The Earth is flat, you should say to them, cite your source. I want to know who you think is the authority figure on the Earth being flat or whatever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Unfortunately, I have now 25 plus years of students who are really tired of seeing in the margins me saying, cite your sources or be careful with unsupported claims and assumptions. But in part, this episode reflects the fact that Nia and I work in an environment where plagiarism is frowned upon.
N. Rodgers: You will be punished.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because you are taking another's ideas and using them without attribution.
N. Rodgers: Which, by the way, is also just rude. In case you were wondering, aside from being unethical and a lot of other things like that, it's also just rude. Somebody put a lot of work into doing what they did, or saying what they said or creating the thing they create, and you just come along and snarf it, that's not cool.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not coo. Because in part, there is no shame in basically writing a long document, and acknowledging that you are using stuff that other people created.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Give them credit because you're going to want credit for the stuff you created.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because if you come up with a new way to look at an old problem or you came up with a change to a test that produces a great result, hey, you're going to want credit.
N. Rodgers: Imagine how crappy you would be if you took your stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you really can't go ahead and say, I deserve credit when you have been using poaching, borrowing, without attribution, somebody else's really cool stuff.
N. Rodgers: But it also happens in politics.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is the focus because Nia and I basically came to the conclusion earlier this year. We were coming up with ideas for potential future podcast episodes, and I still remember it. Nia was just like, "Hey, what's up with all these politicians plagiarizing?" I started doing some research, and there are just tons.
N. Rodgers: It's tons, and we know that people think politicians are dishonest and they lie and they're cheaters, and those things are true of some politicians.
J. Aughenbaugh: Politicians, yes.
N. Rodgers: We also know that some politicians are lazy and sloppy, and so not being surprised that they just wouldn't give citations properly for things that they've snagged. I'm not trying to name call, but Donald Trump is known for that. He's known for calling things out of context, and randomly that. But also telling the word of other people, he's known for doing that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The fact checkers.
N. Rodgers: He is not even close to the worst.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's funny with Donald Trump, Nia, at least for me, is that there's like a special section of fact checkers on how Donald Trump uses.
N. Rodgers: Reword things.
J. Aughenbaugh: Reword things.
N. Rodgers: He's amazing.
J. Aughenbaugh: His misappropriation of context is just truly phenomenal. It is a verbal skill.
N. Rodgers: It's a skill. Do not be confused listeners. It is actually a skill that he has whether it's for good or evil is a separate issue.
J. Aughenbaugh: We can be appalled in odd at the same time.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. It's like one of those 200 foot sandwiches that they build to be the world's largest sandwich. You can be a appalled and amazed at the same time, really. Wow. That's one really big sandwich, and I don't want even a bite of it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because it's somebody who is a huge fan of sandwiches, and I am. I eat a sandwich pretty much every day.
N. Rodgers: I don't want to know what goes into making that much of a sandwich.
J. Aughenbaugh: But all I keep on thinking is the type of gluttony.
N. Rodgers: The number of hands that went into making it few.
J. Aughenbaugh: But what we're talking about here, at least I think for both of us, what's really troubling when politicians plagiarize, is that so much of their jobs is based on creating trust among voters. We know that trust in public officials.
N. Rodgers: Is at an all time low.
J. Aughenbaugh: Low. We've gone so much further lowering, if you will, the standard.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, we didn't know that bar could get this low. People would rather get the plague than hang out with politicians, it's bad. If you get evidence that they're lying about one thing, why would you think they were not lying about other staff?
J. Aughenbaugh: Their education, their background, their qualifications.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. They're going to lie to you about who gave them the idea for something, instead of just saying, I had a really cool conversation in my office. You mentioned something great, and I want to say, thanks, Bob, because that was a great idea. How would that possibly hurt you? It makes you look like you listen to your staff? It makes you look like you pay attention. But instead, they're like, I had this brilliant idea the other day, and then it comes out it wasn't even close to their idea. Now, they look like a lying liar that lies.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then at that point, we almost have the requirement as the public to then look into their background. These seminal events that they mentioned in their life.
N. Rodgers: Does that really happen? Is that really true?
J. Aughenbaugh: Then we start questioning their qualifications.
N. Rodgers: It brings it all the way down to, when you said good morning to me this morning, did you mean it? You know what? The other thing is the cover up. When they're caught having lifted something from somebody or having done something like that with someone, you're like, just say, my bad, I should have given credit where credit was due. Then it would be over. But instead, they're like, no, I would never plag, I would never say anything like that. You have had students do that to you over the years, and I have had them look me in the eye and say, those were my ideas. I'm like, I read that paper by Neil Degrasse Tyson, those are not your your ideas.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've had students come in and plagiarize from work that I wrote, and they are utterly shocked.
N. Rodgers: That you would notice.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because I noticed.
N. Rodgers: They're like, that was my dissertation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or my master's thesis. They were like, well, I didn't mean to. But I said, you did. Now I begin to question pretty much other paragraphs in your paper, and they're like, no, don't do that. I'm like, you forced me to.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Is it American phenomenon you think?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh my goodness, no. In the research that I did, this seems to be a universal characteristic.
N. Rodgers: Storm government officials everywhere?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Again, Nia, you and I touched upon all the reasons why this is particularly problematic in decreasing public trust.
N. Rodgers: Because once they figure out you're fibbing about that, they're going to worry about you're fibbing about something really important.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. In guys, you and I understand that prominent politicians are not going to ask us for advice. But if they did, we would tell them this, thanks to the advanced tools available to people today.
N. Rodgers: You are going to get caught.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're going to get caught.
N. Rodgers: You're going to get caught. There's no escaping.
J. Aughenbaugh: Own up your mistake, and hopefully it will just blow over and you can get back to doing whatever you were doing. Because if you try to run away from it, they cover up.
N. Rodgers: Is worse than the [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: The minimization of what you did wrong just makes you look even worse.
N. Rodgers: Makes you look more guilty.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Nia, are you ready to move on to some prominent examples?
N. Rodgers: I am. I'm curious to see what you've got.
J. Aughenbaugh: Guys, we play no favorites here.
N. Rodgers: We've already mentioned Donald Trump and his tendency to have an adjacent connection to giving people credit. He doesn't give credit to his aides, to his advisors. Every idea that comes across him is his.
J. Aughenbaugh: He just bastardizes the heck out of context.
N. Rodgers: But he is not the only president to do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. Listeners, this cuts across the ideological spectrum, the partisan spectrum. Nation, state origin. We will just go from most recent that we've come across to perhaps farther back. If Donald Trump is bad, Joe Biden, perhaps in a different way is also terrible.
N. Rodgers: Oh my God.
J. Aughenbaugh: The first time he got snagged for plagiarism was the first time he ran for President, which was in 1987, because during that 1987-'88 presidential campaign, he was accused of plagiarizing a speech that British Labor Party leader, Neil Kinnock delivered just four months earlier.
N. Rodgers: He didn't wait for the ink to get dry.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not like he went back into some obscure speech given in the 1850s. No, he plagiarized something. That was heard just four months earlier. I'm like, really? Now, if you think it's just an American phenomenon, you're wrong. Russian President, Vladimir Putin in 2006. The Brookings Institute, one of the most prominent think tanks in the United States, accused Putin of plagiarizing his economics dissertation, where he stole 16 out of 20 pages from a paper published by the University of Pittsburgh 20 years earlier.
N. Rodgers: I would be surprised if that is [inaudible] only venture. Just like that is not Biden's only venture. That was the first, but Biden on a regular basis borrows from other people Ms. Peak. That's interesting. Ms. Peak doesn't fall into plagiarism, but he had been known to pull other people's ideas and drop them into.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or in some cases, he's borrowed other people's life events.
N. Rodgers: Yes, and has dropped them, claimed them. As has unfortunately, Donald Trump. I saw Muslims dancing in the street. No, you didn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, you didn't.
N. Rodgers: Because there weren't any. Because the rest of us could see them, and they were not doing that. Unless you saw imaginary Muslims dancing in the street.
J. Aughenbaugh: We watched it on TV. Yes, we watched it on TV, too, but you didn't see it in person because you weren't on those streets on that particular day. Let's just move on.
N. Rodgers: They both have a tendency to I would say, aggrandize their experience.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, no that's nice.
N. Rodgers: How's that?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm going to aggrandize my experience. We're going to have to remember that.
N. Rodgers: Which is not quite the same as plagiarism, but it is a form of that dishonesty of borrowing someone else's life experience or someone else's experience or knowledge and trying to make it your own. Trying to say, I did this, I was there, I saw, whatever. That is an unfortunate thing that both sides, both candidates on both sides, well, sorry, former candidate Biden and candidate Trump have done. Bipartisan goofery, in that in that instance. Putin's stealing somebody's work, does not surprise me.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Because who to oppose him? Who in Russia is going to say, I don't think this is your work, sir? I love this Gulag. Are they going to paint it black inside as well as outside?
J. Aughenbaugh: Who's going to go to whatever his position now? Is he president or prime minister? It doesn't really matter because it's interchangeable. But who's going to go President?
N. Rodgers: Current.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who's going to say to Putin get back your degree. It ain't going to happen.
N. Rodgers: That feeling on your feet, that's hell freezing over. Please pardon no languish. But that's what would have to happen.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say that you have you have in the notes, one that I find Particularly amusing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which one is this?
N. Rodgers: That is the Hungarian president.
J. Aughenbaugh: Pat Schmidt. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Pi, Paul Schmidt?
J. Aughenbaugh: Paul Schmidt.
N. Rodgers: Paul Schmidt who was an Olympic fencing champion, which he did not fake. That was actually real.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, that was real.
N. Rodgers: He then he goes on to write a dissertation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: For the University of Physical Education, which is in Budapest?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He plagiarize it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, he plagiarizes it. There is a weekly newspaper in 2012 in Hungary that reported that a large part of his dissertation was copied.
N. Rodgers: Many pages, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: A university investigation confirmed that more than 200 pages.
N. Rodgers: Out of?
J. Aughenbaugh: Two hundred and fifteen showed partial similarity to other works or were direct translations.
N. Rodgers: He wrote 15 pages of his dissertation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Wouldn't you have liked have been able to just do 15 pages of your dissertation and call it done?
J. Aughenbaugh: My goodness. I would have loved to have that happen. But just think about this. The percentage of his dissertation that he actually wrote himself, I just pulled up my calculator. Well, was 7%, 7% of his dissertation was not plagiarized.
N. Rodgers: The thing is, he clearly has knowledge of a physical education.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's not like he wasn't an Olympian.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But he just didn't. I just think that's hilarious. I think that's one of those things where you're like, seriously, the percentage of what you've done here is outrageous.
J. Aughenbaugh: Outrageous.
N. Rodgers: Even one thing if it was the reverse, 15 pages out of 215. Well, maybe there are excuses to be made there, although I don't personally [inaudible].
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless.
N. Rodgers: But you might have come in the neighborhood of an excuse, but I just didn't do 93% of my my dissertation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: But there are other gradings.
N. Rodgers: Way to go hungry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Since we're overseas, Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta in 2012. He was accused of plagiarizing his doctorate thesis, also sometimes referred to here in the West as a dissertation. He dismissed the accusation as a political attack from the then president, Trian Basuko.
N. Rodgers: [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. But in 2014, two years later, he handed back his dissertation after a panel at the Bucharest University ruled he had plagiarized much of his 2003 doctoral thesis on the year. This is the subject that kills me on the subject of the International Criminal Court.
N. Rodgers: He plagiarized about a court. Really?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm like, my goodness.
N. Rodgers: The international criminal court, a thing that is controversial, and if you published a paper on it, people would read it. I'm not trying to be cruel here, but if you wrote a dissertation on some obscure thing that five people cared about, you might get away with it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Get away with it. Yes.
N. Rodgers: With plagiarizing because it wouldn't make a splash, they wouldn't be widely read. If you're going to write on something as controversial as the international criminal court, people are going to read that thing. When they do, they are going to have feelings and thoughts.
J. Aughenbaugh: But hey, we can also return back, to the United States for our next two examples. Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky, in 2013, was accused of plagiarism by MS NBC reporter, Rachel Matta, who claimed that a speech that he gave that year was lifted directly from the Wikipedia page of the film Gatica.
N. Rodgers: He likes Wikipedia.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then Buzz feed also reported that he did something similar in another speech where he stole from the movie Stand and Deliver.
N. Rodgers: He steal from the movie or the Wikipedia page about [inaudible]
J. Aughenbaugh: I think.
N. Rodgers: What he likes is Wikipedia?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, in particular, he likes popular movies, which, again, if you're going to go ahead and steal.
N. Rodgers: Probably not picking really well known movies would be, take obscure French films to plagiarize about.
J. Aughenbaugh: These new sources also went on to report that his book, government bullies was heavily plagiarized without attribution, where he stole passages from the following media sources or think tanks, Forbes, the Kato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. Now, Paul admitted he did not attribute the information properly, but not before.
N. Rodgers: This is the best defense ever.
J. Aughenbaugh: But not before he said he was targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters.
N. Rodgers: That's a reason, people hate me, I have haters.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because you are a multiple term senator from Kentucky. Of course, universally loved by everyone.
N. Rodgers: Side notes also, he's claiming laziness there. He's saying that he did not attribute the information properly, which is what we talked about earlier. We talked about how that can have a negative effect. If I were one of his patients, and by patients, I mean, he is a medical doctor. If I was one of his patients, and he said, sometimes I'm sloppy when I attribute things, I'd be, I'm pretty sure he works on eyes. Isn't he specialty ocular issues, I don't want that guy chopping open my eyes if he's lazy, and he's going to tell me he's lazy or bad at attributing or whatever, I don't know. I'm just saying that goes to the earlier thing we were discussing about trust and trust issues, and what finding out somebody fibs about what they know, and in this instance, who cares about Galica, but if you're going to lie about it, are you also going to be a good doctor, I don't know.
J. Aughenbaugh: He is an eye surgeon, I believe.
N. Rodgers: I'm sure he is a very good eye surgeon, I'm not casting his emotions necessarily, except that I don't know that I would trust him, because I have feelings about that.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless, when I saw that, I was just like.
N. Rodgers: Stay away from Wikipedia.
J. Aughenbaugh: When you're just going to go ahead and blame it on your opposition, I'm just, again, you ran for public office.
N. Rodgers: You knew there was going to be an opposition, and he is deliberately oppositional as a person. Some people don't seek out enemies, how many members of Congress, and I'm not trying to be difficult. You're separate, so you don't get to count yourself in this number, but the average person, how many members of Congress can they really name, probably 15 or 20 out of the 535 members of Congress, because everybody else is keeping a low profile. If you choose not to keep a low profile, then your life gets pulled apart.
J. Aughenbaugh: You get under the magnifying glass pretty quickly.
N. Rodgers: Whether that's fair or not, it's just fact.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, then we have a couple more examples, the next one just crack me up. Senator John Walsh, he was a senator from Montana in 2014, he was alleged that three quarters of his 20-page master's thesis for the Army War College was found to be plagiarized. I got to admit, I was a little taken back when I found out that his master's thesis was only 20 pages, but nevertheless, three quarters of that.
N. Rodgers: 15 pages.
J. Aughenbaugh: His 15 pages was found to be plagiarized, this was reported in the New York Times. This scandal actually forced him to withdraw from his reelection campaign. This is one of the rare times he's actually being punished.
N. Rodgers: I mean punished in the sense that other than being mocked publicly, which is what tends to happen with most of these scandals.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let me see, Barack Obama in 2008, was accused by the Hillary Clinton campaign for lifting. I always like this, I found this a number of times in my research, it's not plagiarizing. You lifted something, you lifted rhetoric, lifted words. Lifted rhetoric from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. In the Clinton campaign, the claim was, if your candidacy is about words, then they should be your own words.
N. Rodgers: Then his defense was Deval and I hang out a lot, and we chat, and we exchange ideas. He uses my ideas and I use, which I thought was a weird defense, because it's not a defense. You're saying, but he's okay with it, so I do it, but that doesn't change the underlying question of, was it your idea or not?
J. Aughenbaugh: Because if you're given a speech.
N. Rodgers: The impression is that it's your idea.
J. Aughenbaugh: Particularly because you use the first person.
N. Rodgers: I think, then, it really should be your thought. If not, then you could say, Deval Patrick and I were talking the other day, and he had this really great idea, and I agree with it. What would be wrong with that. There'd be nothing wrong with that, except that you would be putting somebody else's name in your speeches, and that's no go.
N. Rodgers: Politicians.
J. Aughenbaugh: On one hand, Barack Obama got criticized for plagiarism, but then somebody overseas got accused of plagiarizing one of his speeches.
N. Rodgers: Although, now, you have to wonder if it was Deval Patrick's speech, but anyway, that was just rude.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was a punch line waiting to be said, it was stall fall.
N. Rodgers: You set me up a nice step.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Kate Osamor.
N. Rodgers: I don't know.
J. Aughenbaugh: She won re-election in 2017 in Great Britain. She was a Labor Party member of Parliament, delivered a speech that closely resembled a speech that Barack Obama gave in Chicago after he won, I think it was.
N. Rodgers: Now, you remember her reason. Her Reasoning is hilarious
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, she went ahead, her justification was, the speech that Obama gave that she used was inspirational and did not need an introduction.
J. Aughenbaugh: How was this, I got to admit, Nia.
N. Rodgers: It so well-known, it didn't need any introduction. From now on, when I lift really well-known, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I just claim that idea because everybody ought to know that it's FDR. It's on you that you don't know that, it's not on me, that's basically what she's saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the inspirational part. This just inspired me, well, hell, if that's the case, I'll just go ahead and start using lyrics from Bruce Springsteen songs.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say end lines from Scorsese.
J. Aughenbaugh: Facing films.
N. Rodgers: No problem, I'll just start talking in other people's work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because they just inspired me, and they're so well-known, I don't need to go ahead.
N. Rodgers: I don't need to cite because it's so well-known.
J. Aughenbaugh: I don't need to quote the source, I could just, say, hey, it's just inspirational.
N. Rodgers: I hate to break this to listeners, but I don't care what you're quoting, you need to cite the source. You could be quoting the Christian Bible, which is highly known to many of your readers. You still need to tell them that you got that quote from Genesis or wherever. You can't just say, Oh, well, everybody knows that's from the Bible, no, they don't, and that's not on your reader to know that, it's on you to that, it on you to tell them that, but that's a funny, well, I mean, everybody knows Barack Obama's speeches, no, they don't.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, they don't.
N. Rodgers: A lot of people don't. I don't know presidential speeches. Not just his, but lots of them, I don't like to listen to presidents because most of the time they're boring as all get out.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then I basically know that somebody else wrote the speech anyways.
N. Rodgers: Unless there's some tag line that's really cool, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. I'm not going to remember it, I'm sorry. Part of me wants to say, you probably don't want me to remember, because if you want me to remember, it's been so bad, whatever happened was so bad, it's memorable. Poor President Bush, good job there, Brownie on the heels of Katrina, one of the worst things that's ever happened to the United States in terms of weather.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or in terms of his father, who gave numerous speeches as a senator, as the head of the CIA, as Vice President. Most political scientists only remember the fact that he gave a speech when he was running for the Republican Party nomination.
N. Rodgers: Read my lips.
J. Aughenbaugh: Did no new taxes
N. Rodgers: Then he immediately had to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then he becomes president and a year and a half later as part of a budget deal, he had to agree to new taxes. I remember, for instance, one of his opponents in 1992, the Short Texan Ross Perot. Huge sucking sound, as he was making reference to American jobs that went up to Canada or down to Mexico because of NAFTA. I only remember it in part because of his accent and the way he drew out huge sucking sound, and I was just, when did huge become a multisyllable word.
N. Rodgers: We have a couple more?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, speaking of Obama's, excuse me, listeners. President Trump's wife, former first lady, what's her name Melania.
N. Rodgers: Melania Trump.
J. Aughenbaugh: Gave a speech where she plagiarized part of a speech given by Michelle Obama in 2008.
N. Rodgers: It wouldn't have been so bad except she did it at the Republican National Convention. If she had done it at a hospital somewhere, or a school opening or some place where the First Lady's speech is covered, but it's not really covered that much in depth, but she did it on television at the Republican National Convention. Now, I am about to defend First Lady Melania Trump.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: First Lady Melania Trump, her English is her fourth language.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Whatever it is, it is not her first language. She speaks multiple languages, but English is not her first language. She has speechwriters, and her speechwriters did her dirty.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they did.
N. Rodgers: I think she probably was not familiar enough with English to recognize the cadence of somebody else's speech. I don't usually give a pass for plagiarism, I would give a pass in this instance. I think her speechwriters hurt her doing that, and I think they didn't think she'd get caught, or they didn't think they'd get caught, or they were lazy, I don't know why they did that.
J. Aughenbaugh: But to go ahead and quote, Michelle Obama in a speech given at the Republican National Convention, you might as well have just gone ahead and put a big knee on sign above her head.
N. Rodgers: Pick on me, plagiarism.
J. Aughenbaugh: Plagiarism is about to ensue.
N. Rodgers: In that instance, I actually feel bad for her because I think she was not, and I'm not trying to be ugly. I don't know what their marriage is like, but I don't know how much support she got prior to that speech from her husband.
J. Aughenbaugh: He had a reputation before he was president of ending loyalty quickly. You want to do one more example?
N. Rodgers: Because this one stands out to me for a reason that is not stated in your notes, but I think is probably implied.
J. Aughenbaugh: Ben Carson, who is a former candidate for the Republican Party nomination for President in 2016, was accused of plagiarism in his book, America the Beautiful, which was published in 2006. He used several sources without giving any citation or credit, he admitted his mistake, and then I put in my notes, and I was being sarcastic, maybe a success in the 2016 presidential campaign would have been bigger if the incident had not occurred.
N. Rodgers: You're putting that as mockery because that was the least of his problems from his, that's not what kept him from being present in the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, he's a doctor.
N. Rodgers: That's what I was going to bring up is that, he's a medical professional. Suggesting that being sloppy about your sources, again, comes back to what I said about Senator Paul, which is, I don't know if I trust you as a doctor if you're telling me that you can't be bothered to get the details right, I need you to get the details right. If you're going to be messing around in my eye, if you're going to be my doctor, if you whatever, but I also think that Ben Carson did not have the best speaking.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Rhetoric?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He struggled sometimes, I think so I suspect it drew attention to his writing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Similarly with Joe Biden, who does not particularly speak well in public and is known for being Gaff City, but it draws attention to your written work because theoretically, your written work should be better.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah and this is in contrast, for instance, to, by all accounts, Ben Carson is or was a very good doctor. Very intelligent. Joe Biden.
N. Rodgers: Very intelligent person.
J. Aughenbaugh: Very intelligent person and was noted for years as one of the most successful one on one politicians in Washington, DC.
N. Rodgers: Very charming, and able to work the Senate and able to get deals.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is not to go ahead and besmirch their intelligence, or other skills that they have, but again, if you're a doctor, you know you have to pay attention to details.
N. Rodgers: And if you're publishing a book.
J. Aughenbaugh: With some of these other politicians, when we're talking about their master's thesis or their doctoral dissertation, these are the things that are drummed into your head at a very early age. To go ahead and say that you did it inadvertently, or that you were sloppy, usually gets the skeptical side eye from me.
N. Rodgers: Raised eyebrows.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because this gets drummed into your head. I don't care what institution where you get an advanced degree. I'm really skeptical, but I am willing to give passes in some contexts, simply because let's face it, Ben Carson was not ready to give credit. He was not ready for the prime time and that's an old troop.
N. Rodgers: Ready for prime-time players.
J. Aughenbaugh: Players from Saturday Night Life. It was pretty obvious that the Republican Party was just like, hey, we have an African American doctor who is a Republican.
N. Rodgers: He's very smart.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. He's very smart.
N. Rodgers: Let's put him forward.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But he was not as I think vetted and prepared.
J. Aughenbaugh: He should have been.
N. Rodgers: They did him dirty.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They did him dirty.
N. Rodgers: In some ways, but I will say that, you put something in your notes that I think is powerfully important and it is true of a lot of these instances. His book was published in 2006. He ran for the presidency in 2016. What you do early in your career can come back to haunt you.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: It's better to never have made these mistakes than to have to apologize for them.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: It will come back. It will bite you in the end because I don't care how magnanimous the press is going to be with a candidate. They will still go look for stuff because they're the press. It's their job. Their job is to vet you for the American public.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: You're going to get paid attention to.
J. Aughenbaugh: You're going to get that scrutiny.
N. Rodgers: Scrutiny, thank you. You're going to get that scrutiny. When you do, stuff that you did when you were in college at VCU and you weren't thinking about it, and you just plagiarize something, will come back to bite you in the buttocks, as Forrest Gump would say.
J. Aughenbaugh: Another point here that should be made for our listeners who might be thinking about a public career. Remember, it's your campaign. If you get a speech that's written by a speech writer or a team of speech writers, or you have an aide who writes a draft of something, it's on you. Yes, you may be able to fire that staffer, but think about the number of examples that we just covered Nia, where more than likely what happened is okay, staffer did them wrong.
N. Rodgers: Somebody else wrote the speech.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it's your campaign.
N. Rodgers: Take the text, put it into Google and see if it came from somewhere else.
J. Aughenbaugh: You need to set the culture to where plagiarism is not acceptable. Because again, you give a speech, you put out a campaign policy platform, whatever the case may be. If you don't have sources, people are going to find it, and it's not just the press. Remember.
N. Rodgers: Watch your organization. It's your opposition research.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're all vetting you, and it's your campaign. It's your name that's on the ballot.
N. Rodgers: Its your name that's on the paper you're turning in.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Make sure it's your work.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Your crappy work is significantly better than your stolen work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: A professor, a dissertation committee, whomever would rather have average work from you that actually came from you than stellar work that you stole.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. I know many of my students and many of your students, Nia, really struggle with that.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, but they say it so much better. Yes, but if you don't cite them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, or learn how to paraphrase and cite, you'll never learn how to do it yourself, but anyways, this has been a fascinating episode.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. It's really interesting and it's interesting how often presidential candidates don't seem to have mentioned to their staffs at all. Hey, you might want to look at my dissertation, or hey, you might want to look at my book or you might want to look at my previous speeches and make sure that I'm not out here being a big giant gup.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or think about those people behind the scenes who reach out and pick somebody and say, you should run for office, but the people who are reaching out and touching them, have not vetted them. Go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Can we ask, please politicians to not say the answer is, I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Or I didn't think it was like, don't do that. Don't make that the response to this question. If you're asked about something that you've done like that, say, oh my gosh, I had no idea, let me look into it, and then you go away and you come up with an actual statement that says, my apologies. This was not acceptable. The original work came from this person and I want to give them credit. That's all you have to do, and then it's a non story.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then it's a non story, but when you say, I don't know why you're making a big deal out of this, well, you thought that was a big deal. That's because you haven't seen this other big deal I'm about to make. It's only going to get worse.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's a big deal.
J. Aughenbaugh: They parse the words when they try to minimize mistake.
N. Rodgers: Just own it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, just own it. Many of us..
N. Rodgers: We respect you more.
J. Aughenbaugh: We respect you more. Because when we look at our own lives, we've made mistakes.
N. Rodgers: We've done it. We've made mistakes.
J. Aughenbaugh: We have asked others to give us second, third, fourth, fifth, and 10th chances, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But when you start going ahead and lying about this, and you think you can skate on this, well, most of us don't skate on those things, but anyways, really good episode, thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, thank you [inaudible]. Thank you for doing the research on it. I loved reading your notes, because that thing about the Olympics just hilarious to me and it's hilarious to me that somebody would write 7% of their dissertation. [inaudible] had not done the math but you giving me that math now, even makes it even funnier. Even so I'm like, wow. Whatever else may be true of our American politicians, generally we're not that bad.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: That's a lot.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a lot.
N. Rodgers: That's a lot. You got to be brass. You got to be built of brass to do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Thank you for that. I really appreciate that.
J. Aughenbaugh: See you.
N. Rodgers: Bye.
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