Neither Plagiarism Nor Hope

As is typical of this election race, reportage about a particular event, like Clinton's famous pre-New Hampshire breakdown, or the most recent furore over Obama's plagiarized' stump speech, has covered everything but the interesting part. For those who missed it, Obama recently defended himself from Hillary's accusation that he is all words no substance by more or less reiterating a few lines from a speech by Obama's friend, Massachussetts Governor Patrick Duvall. As ABC reports

In 2006 Patrick gave a speech quoting famous phrases: "'We have nothing to fear, but fear itself,' … just words. 'Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' Just words. … 'I have a dream' … just words,'" he said, switching effortlessly from FDR to JFK to MLK.

On Saturday in Wisconsin, Obama said, "Don't tell me words don't matter. … 'I have a dream.' Just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' Just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Just words. Just speeches."

Hillary's supporters accused Obama of plagiarism, and since then the media has dutifully reported the ongoing spat. But reporting the mutual accusations misses the point. In politics plagiarism is not a problem, and in some sense is a necessary virtue. Unity, solidarity, and joint pursuit of cause means that more than one person will say the same thing. They should say the same thing if they jointly believe in it!

The problem in Obama's case is a congenital lack of originality and the way in which he empties past slogans of their meaning. Obama has been campaigning off the reflected glory of 'hope' mantras for a while, making 'Yes We Can'/'Si Se Puede' a chant since he became a viable candidate. But the only thing left of the words of FDR, JFK, MLK or Cesar Chavez are the mere words themselves, and their lingering aura, rather than the politics to which they refer. This is why they are useful to Obama. I have already described the disanalogy between Obama and MLK so let me illustrate my point with a different slogan.

'Yes We Can' used to be the expression of a politics of a solidarity amongst the working class, and later immigrant labor, that was combined with an intense, militant, dare we say partisan, attitude towards politics. This militant partisanship is precisely the kind of thing Obama wants to nullify. Obama rejects that one even has to take sides in politics. So when Obama claims that 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' 'I have a dream' and 'yes we can' are more than 'just words' he is wrong...now. They once summarized and helped produced the solidarity of an actual political movement - be it civil rights struggle, class politics, or the fight for independence. These words once referred to political substance; they were slogans in the good sense. Now they really are just empty words, referring nothing more to the glossy hopes of an electoral movement revolving around a single personality, unable to generate a politics beyond himself.