A former George W. Bush speechwriter has accused President Obama of plagiarizing parts of last night's State of the Union address from one delivered by George W. Bush a few years ago. And this accusation is nothing new, as the president has been accused by others of plagiarism before, even by Hillary Clinton in 2008. But this is a ridiculous claim to make against the president, and I'll tell you why.
President Obama doesn't write his speeches; he just reads them from a teleprompter. Even his speech announcing he was going to run for president was written by someone else (I was very disappointed/disillusioned when I found that out*). So how could he be guilty of plagiarism when he doesn't write the speech? Unless it's a crime to read someone else's writing, then he's innocent of this charge.
Here's the claim from last night:
http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/01/29/obama-accused-plagiarizing
And here's Hillary's claim from 2008:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/politics/19campaign.html?_r=0
* I understand that presidents have speechwriters, and that's fine, but I think candidates should write their own speeches, because how else are we supposed to know who they are or what they stand for? Someone else's speech could completely mislead us, so we should get to hear their own words, just so we really know who they are and what they want to do.
