So perhaps the actual indictment is different from the implied one.

From Biden Plagiarism Is Repeating History by Deanna Fisher.

When Joe Biden ran for president in the previous century, his campaign hit a pretty large speedbump over plagiarism charges.

Yes, during Biden’s run for the Democrat nomination in 1988, over 30 years ago, he was caught copying other people’s work.

During his failed 1988 run, Biden lifted portions of a speech by United Kingdom Labour MP and Margaret Thatcher challenger Neil Kinnock.”

New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd reported on the fiasco in September 1987.”

During an event at the Iowa State Fair, Biden mimicked entire portions of Kinnock’s speech from earlier in the year. At one moment, Biden repeated the line that he was the first “in a thousand generations” to graduate from college, gesturing to his wife in the exact same way Kinnock did, while also saying the same line about her education and lineage.”

Biden would later acknowledge that he in fact did have relatives who attended college, directly contrasting the Kinnock lines.”

As Dowd reported, Biden’s staffers were defensive about the allegations of blatant plagiarism. Nevertheless, Biden dropped out of the race by the end of the month.”

According to another 1987 article in The Times, Biden acknowledged plagiarizing a law review journal for a paper during law school, and asked school administrators not to be expelled. But Biden also said he made a mistake in the citation process.”

“My intent was not to deceive anyone,” Biden wrote at the time. ”For if it were, I would not have been so blatant.”

Well, the century is different, but ol’ Joe is just the same. Or, at least, he has people working in his campaign who don’t have any problem plagiarizing other people’s work.

She then provides a couple of reasonably clear instances where Biden policy positions posted on his website are lifted without attribution from other people.

Biden staffers KNOW that plagiarism has kneecapped their boss in the past. How on earth were they so stupid as to do this, knowing that the internet makes it virtually impossible to pull this kind of plagiarism off? Are they all incompetent fools? Is this coming from the top down?

I wrote something related to this a month ago, A contemporary Greek tragedy.

Fisher's article sparked a different question in my mind. Is history repeating itself or are we seeing history repeat itself.

The distinction I am drawing contrasts two propositions.

Proposition 1

Biden's personal carelessness with acknowledging and crediting other people's ideas and work has spilled over into the culture of his campaign and is being manifested through the behavior and actions of junior staffers.

Proposition 2

Because of Biden's history of plagiarism and fabrication, we are predisposed to look for that same attribute again this time.

Under Proposition 1, there is a real pattern of plagiarism different from and more voluminous than other campaigns.

Under Proposition 2, because we expect to find patterns of plagiarism, the same frequency of occasional and accidental plagiarism which likely occurs in all campaigns is incorrectly being seen as evidence of the return of old bad Biden habits.

Both seem eminently plausible.

The proposition does, however, require us to assume that a Biden bad habit (plagiarism) is in some fashion contagious - it can spread from him to the institution of his campaign such that junior members contract that contagion. Or possibly that some combination of personal attributes which Biden finds amenable and selects for among his campaign members is a combination which is itself independently susceptible to tolerating plagiarism. Certainly not inconceivable ideas, but a bit more of a stretch.

On the other hand a good leader always covers their flank and compensates for their weakness. If your own past failings make people disposed to see a negative attribute, then you take actions to ensure that there is no hint of a replication of such a negative attribute.

So perhaps the actual indictment is different from the implied one. Perhaps the question is not so much as to whether plagiarism has once again raised its ugly head. Perhaps the indictment is that Biden either failed to acknowledge the earlier instance or simply failed as a leader to implement precautions to prevent it resurfacing. That speaks, perhaps, more powerfully to his unpreparedness as a leader.