It was 1968. I was…ahhhhh…17 years old. And a rabid fan of New York Senator Robert Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. This amused my very Republican parents, who had, earlier in life, been serious Republican activists in my native Massachusetts. In fact, my Dad actually knew then-Senator John F. Kennedy. But suffice to say, they were Nixon fans in 1960.
So with the patience of parents encouraging their budding political child, they encourage me to be me – and me, swept up in the Kennedy era, was a decided Bobby Kennedy fan.
And then. Senator Kennedy, in another act of horror that seemed to be sweeping the country that year (Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated in April), Bobby Kennedy, having just claimed victory in the California Democratic primary, was himself assassinated by Palestinian Israel-hater Sirhan Sirhan as RFK made his way back through the hotel kitchen to his suite.
As with millions of other Americans, my teenage self was shocked and devastated. My Nixon-supporting Mom, always encouraging of her son participating in life, agreed to hop a bus with me so we could go from our then-home in Allentown, Pennsylvania to New York City. There, on a hot June day, we stood in line for hours so I could walk into St. Patrick’s Cathedral where RFK lay in state. So I could touch the flag on RFK’s casket.
Not many weeks went by when long-playing record albums of Bobby Kennedy’s speeches were released. I bought them, but of course, and the geeky kid that I was I listened to them for hours on end – memorizing them.
Move ahead now to September of 1987. I am now working in the White House Political Affairs Office for President Ronald Reagan. We had been dealing all summer with the now-infamous Senate hearings on the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. The hearings were chaired by….Senator Joe Biden. Who, as it happened, was already running for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.
Out of the blue, one of the Biden competitors, the campaign of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, released a devastating commercial that showed in split-screen fashion Joe Biden clearly plagiarizing a trademark speech of the British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. There was an uproar, and Biden denied doing it deliberately.
And…uh-oh.
A few months earlier I had happened to catch a C-Span broadcast of Biden addressing the California Democratic party state convention. Suddenly, I had been startled as I watched to realize that I was getting to the end of Biden’s speech before he was. In fact, he was plagiarizing directly from Bobby Kennedy – and I recognized it on the spot. I was ticked off – but did nothing.
Now it was September, and the Kinnock affair had burst into the open, followed by the Biden denial. And realizing that the denial was false and I could prove it, I picked up the phone and called the New York Times reporter covering the Biden story – Maureen Dowd. I told her my tale. She was astonished and asked if I could document and prove this. I could.
I produced my album of RFK speeches, and knowing exactly where the speech in question was to be found, I brought my old album to the Times Washington bureau. That was a Monday. By Wednesday there was this front-page story in the Times. The headline:
Biden Is Facing Growing Debate On His Speeches
And on the inside page where the story continued was this header:
Notice at the White House
The paper reported:
“At the White House, N. Jeffrey Lord, associate director in the office of political affairs, was watching as Senator Biden spoke. A devout Robert Kennedy fan as a youth who keeps a print of the Jamie Wyeth portrait of John Kennedy in his office at the Reagan White House, Mr. Lord had listened to a memorial record of Robert Kennedy’s speeches so often that he knew them by heart.
As Senator Biden spoke, Mr. Lord found himself suddenly reciting the words along with him. ”I was finishing sentences before he was,” said Mr. Lord, who called The New York Times to point out the similarities. ”I wanted to listen because Biden had such a reputation as a great speaker that I wanted to hear him. But suddenly I realized the speech wasn’t Joe Biden, it was Robert Kennedy. He was repeating the exact language, without attributing it. I was really ticked.”
Cue more controversy.
A new “Biden plagiarizes” story emerged, one that involved alleged plagiarizing while Biden was in law school. Within a matter of days, Joe Biden dropped out of the 1988 presidential race.
All of which comes back as the memory stirs over allegations from President Trump that Biden has plagiarized his “Buy American” proposal. Said the President per Fox News:
“He plagiarized from me, but he can never pull it off,” Trump said. “He likes plagiarizing.”
Yes, Mr. President. Yes, he does.
As I can personally attest.
