Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America's First Postmodern President by Jack Cashill

Author:Jack Cashill
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: American Government, Essays, Executive Branch
ISBN: 9781451611137
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2011-02-15T07:00:00+00:00

Wrote Goodwin:

Mrs. Harvey Gibson gave a tea in her honor to introduce her to some of the other girls—hardly a routine practice for new recruits.

Goodwin added only the first name “Harvey” and passed the sentence off as her own. She did the same with just the most minimal alterations in scores of other instances as well. When challenged, Goodwin wrote a long-winded and utterly disingenuous apologia in Time unintentionally summarized by her phrase “mistakes can happen.” These “mistakes” netted McTaggart, in her words, “a substantial monetary settlement.”

If caught making the same or even lesser “mistakes,” a Harvard student would have had to withdraw from school immediately, stay away from campus for at least two additional semesters, and work satisfactorily at a full-time job for six months before being readmitted. Even if allowed back on campus, the student would have an “academic dishonesty” mark permanently branded on his record.

When the student editors of the Harvard Crimson went after Goodwin, Tribe dependably went after the editors. He scolded them for their “lack of any real sense of proportion or, for that matter, much sense of decency.” If his prose was awkward, Tribe’s instincts were sound. No liberal has used the “decency” gambit so nimbly since Joseph Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings.

With support from Tribe and other literati, Goodwin wormed her way out of what should have been a career-killer. Through a combination of dissembling, denial, discreet payoffs to the plagiarized author, and strategic Bush-bashing, she was able to slither back onto network TV and the bestseller lists. So deft was the colonic mix that by 2008 Obama could cite “a wonderful book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin” without the slightest sense of taint.

“That Harvard is setting a very bad example, with all too much of the bad stuff centered in its law school, is all too evident,” writes Velvel. One unfortunate consequence of this phenomenon was that the young were watching and learning from the masters. Here is how Velvel imagines their thought process might go:

On balance, it is well worth it, for on the one side lies fame and fortune, and on the other lies only a slap on the wrist. And, especially if I can hide my misdeeds for years (as seems usually to occur), and in the meanwhile have become a big deal, I am virtually assured of suffering nothing other than a minor slap on the wrist if and when I am finally caught.

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