[ad_1]
- Former Vice President Joe Biden mounted an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1988.
- When incidents of plagiarism in campaign speeches and during law school were revealed, his campaign was quickly suspended.
- "My intention was not to deceive anyone," wrote Biden at the time. "If that was the case, I would not have been so blatant."
- Biden is thinking of another victory for the presidency in 2020, an announcement could be made this month.
Before Joe Biden was vice president under the Barack Obama administration, and before retiring from the 2008 presidential race, the long-time Delaware senator had unsuccessfully presented to the Democratic nomination of 1988.
Plagiarism incidents on the way to and from the Syracuse University School of Law became one of the last issues Biden was concerned about before he finally suspended his chaotic campaign.
Read more:Joe Biden's long history in public life could come back to haunt him if he decided to run for president
During his failure in 1988, Biden picked up part of the speech of UK Labor MP and Margaret Thatcher challenger, Neil Kinnock.
Maureen Dowd, a reporter for The New York Times, reported on the September 1987 fiasco.
At an event at the Iowa State Fair, Biden imitated whole portions of Kinnock's speech delivered earlier in the year. At one point, Biden repeated that he was the first "in a thousand generations" to graduate from university, gesturing to his wife just like Kinnock, while saying the same thing about his education and his lineage.
Biden will later recognize that he actually had parents attending university, which contrasted directly with the Kinnock lines.
As Dowd reported, Biden's staff was on the defensive of allegations of blatant plagiarism. Nevertheless, Biden has retired from the race at the end of the month.
According to another article in the Times in 1987, Biden admitted to having plagiarized a law journal written during a law school and asked school administrators not to be deported. But Biden also said he made a mistake in the quotation process.
"My intention was not to deceive anyone," wrote Biden at the time. "If that was the case, I would not have been so blatant."
The scandal erupted at the same time that Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and oversaw the sadly partisan confirmation process of failed Supreme Court candidate Robert Bork.
Biden's plagiarism became a hot campaign topic that his Democratic rival of 1988, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, used in an advertisement for a video attack that was leaked to several media, according to a Washington Post article in 1987.
At the time, Biden rejected the distribution of the video by other campaigns as dirty politics.
"Look, I'm a big boy," he said. "I've been in politics for 15 years, it's not my style, they want to do it that way, so be it."
Dukakis – who was to win the nomination but lost the general election of late President George HW Bush – finally sacked his political director Paul Tully and campaign director John Sasso following the publicity.
In a telling moment demonstrating just three decades of collegiate primary battles, Dukakis even held a press conference during which he apologized to Biden, "his family and friends for what had happened and for the implication of my campaign in all this situation, "The Times reported in 1987.
Biden reiterated that he was wrong, but did not have the deliberate intention of plagiarizing during his law studies.
"I was wrong, but I was not in any way malicious," he said. I did not intentionally delude myself. And I did not do it. To date, I have not done it.
& # 39; & # 39; When I was in Syracuse, & # 39; & # 39; Biden added, & # 39; & # 39; I was married, I was at law school, I wore sports coats. You look at a guy from the middle class. I am who I am. I'm not a big fan of bulletproof vests and tinted shirts. You know, it's not me. & # 39; & # 39;
[ad_2]
Source link