There's no doubt to me that Melania Trump plagiarized. I'd even be willing to go so far to say Donald Trump Jr. plagiarized in his speech, too (not giving credit for someone else's words is a form of plagiarism). But, as that fount of wisdom Newt Gingrich has already bloviated: "Who cares" if she plagiarized? In one sense he's right, but in the other he's missing the real issue.
As I wrote last week (see? attribution isn't hard), No one should be voting for or against a candidate because of a speech their spouse makes. Plagiarism is trying to pass someone else's words off as your own — it's a form of laziness. It's lazy to say "I came up with this on my own" when you didn't. In that case, it's also lying. Now, I'll freely admit that there are times in which plagiarism is accidental, or an attribution is ignored. We'll get to an example of that later. Let's be clear: These are all wrong. On the scale of things, though, plagiarism can be overcome. It's not a death blow, politically.
And this is where Gingrich is wrong: It's not the crime, it's the reaction and the reference. Here are three case studies:
Take the issue of Donald Trump Jr.'s lifting of a key paragraph from Frank Buckley (who later admitting to lifting the lines himself without attribution, but let's ignore that for now) in his speech on Tuesday. In this case, Buckley acknowledged giving Trump Jr. the lines, and saying there was nothing to apologize for. This is still plagiarism. It's taking someone else's ideas, words or thoughts and claiming them as your own. But in this case, he was referencing an ally/friend. It's no surprise that Trump Jr. took the line, but he also didn't apologize, either. This is plagiarism with no acknowledgement.
Many have compared the Melania incident to one from President Obama's early career, when he took lines from a Deval Patrick (Mass. Gov.) speech and made them his own in one major speech. While he had used those lines before, he had always given attribution until it was dropped. Patrick, a friend and supporter of Obama's, said he had given Obama permission to use the lines. However, after the plagiarism was discovered, Obama made a public apology and vowed to use better attribution in the future. It was plagiarism with acknowledgement.
Finally, we have the Melania Trump kerfuffle. She stole lines from someone who she ostensibly did not have permission (unlike the Trump Jr. and Deval Patrick incidents). That's bad. What's worse is the mad scramble to deny/reject/outright muck up the waters in the wake of it. And there was the issue that Melania and the campaign claimed both before and after that she wrote the speech herself with little help. First, the Trump staff called it "absurd," then "crazy." Later, it was the claim that her speechwriters "should have cleaned it up better." Then the campaign brought up John Legend, Akon, and even My Little Pony's Twilight Sparkle as examples of people who'd used similar language while ignoring the full extent and order of the speech. It was two days later before we learned a) Melania didn't write it and b) who did. Further, the incident was waved off by the Trump campaign as "innocent." It was plagiarism with denial, bargaining, and a lack of a cohesive response.
I'd rank them from most serious to least serious this way: 1) Melania Trump 2) Donald Trump Jr. 3) Barack Obama. Ultimately, we learned more about the Trump campaign than we did about Melania Trump. The Trump campaign is disorganized, denied obvious facts for two days, and still cannot admit fault. If that is how he and his potential administration will deal with a minor issue like a plagiarism scandal, what happens when the issue is of much grander importance?
Convention Cues
I believe a convention is a presidential dry-run. It's a microcosm of what that party/candidate will do when they have control. And both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have the full control of how their party's... party (heh!) will go. At some point, if elected, they'll have to govern. If they can't keep a four-day convention on the rails, how will they handle the military or the economy or foreign affairs? All of those things are far more difficult to manage than a four-day event.
We'll see what happens with the Democratic convention later this month, but the best thing for them would be to have an event without a lot of drama. Because boy howdy, the GOP convention has been a disaster so far. Now, tonight's the night when Trump plays his best cards: Ivanka is probably his strongest, most willing supporter and someone with a clean political pedigree. I expect a great speech from her. Then Trump will speak, and I feel like by now, there's only one type of Trump speech.
But the week has been disastrous. There was the aforementioned Melania Trump struggles. There was the fact that the best celebrities he could get were Antonio Sabato Jr., Scott Baio and a Duck Dynasty guy. There's the troubling report from the New York Times that when a Trump surrogate (one of his sons) offered the VP slot to John Kasich, he also offered control over "domestic and foreign policy." There's the fact that most GOP leaders tried to split the baby by either endorsing by remote video (Marco Rubio), giving a boilerplate GOP speech without much talk of Trump specifically (McConnell/Ryan) or well, I think it's time we talked about Ted Cruz.
Quick aside: GOP voters have shown they love people who "speak their minds." Trump does it and gets nominated, Cruz does it and gets booed? Anyway, you have four primetime slots during the convention. Three, if you don't count the nominee on Thursday. Cruz and Pence split the primetime addresses on Wednesday. Pence couldn't have been more overshadowed if he literally stood in the shadows. Cruz gave a very public snub on a very public stage. Was there anything way out of line? I'm not so sure, but he milked some pregnant pauses. In doing so, he drew attention to his lack of an endorsement, practically taunting the audience. OK, but what does that mean? It means a) the GOP isn't as unified as they want you to believe b) Ted Cruz just shoved the wedge between factions a little deeper and c) Trump is terrible at management. I say that because there are only two possibilities for Trump putting Cruz on the stage. Either he knew or he didn't know what Cruz would say. If he did know, then he's courting disaster, inviting a rift in his party, or setting Cruz up to be a pariah. If he didn't know, then he stupidly put a loose cannon on stage in primetime without enough vetting.
Summary Judgments
CNN, why do you think Eric Trump saying the Trump campaign will be studied for years is "breaking news"? That's pretty weak breaking news. Let's leave the important, red-text line for what's actually breaking news. • • • I'm waiting to hear an explanation as to why this man was shot. It's been nearly 24 hours. I've said this countless times: In the absence of an explanation, people will make their own assumptions. It's bad PR not to have an answer. • • • This headline makes me cringe, for grammatical reasons. Join I? • • • I've been using redstate.com as my go-to for conservative views. To say they are conflicted about this last week's events is an understatement. • • • I'm sorry that all I've got this week is discussion of the GOP. I'm sure my attention will turn to the Democrats at the end of the month. • • • Evie's in a big-girl toddler bed. So far, so good! Though last night, she made noise after bedtime and started to come out of the room. She saw us. We said, "Go to bed." She turned around and went to sleep. I'm sure it'll be that easy going forward, right?
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