I take Maureen Dowd at her word that her almost word-for-word plagiarism of Josh Marshall was inadvertent. The reason? It would make little sense for her to think she could get away with such blatant lifting without attribution, so she she would not have attempted it. She has no record, that I am aware of anyway, of similar breaches. What do I think happened? I think her explanation is probably accurate.
She had an email exchange with a friend who used Josh’s argument verbatim and without letting Dowd know that they were not offering an original insight. Dowd was impressed with their point and used it verbatim because it didn’t really require improvement. It would make little sense to source a friend’s email and her friend would be sufficiently rewarded just knowing that their idea had made it into the New York Times’ opinion page.
I suppose there is a certain element of laziness involved. And we might think slightly less of Dowd now that we know that she is willing to pass off her friends’ wit as her own. But I really don’t see it as a big deal. It was probably her friend who was more guilty of passing on other’s work as their own in a false effort to seem smarter than they really are. It’s a non-issue.
Via email and listservs and the blogosphere, I am pummeled all day long with ideas that did not originate with me, and they often get me thinking and provide the impetus for what I write. By no means do I always give credit for inspiration, even when I am fully self-conscious of it.
I’m a severe critic of Dowd’s work, but not for her work ethics. It has to do with something she explained in the introduction of her book Bushworld:
I was a Times White House reporter for the first Bush administration. Though 41 was always gracious, I know he was disappointed at first to have drawn a irreverent, newfangled ‘reporterette,” as Rush Limbaugh would say, who wanted to focus as much on the personalities of leaders as on their policies. But I always figured it this way: Politicians can tell you they won’t ever raise taxes- read their lips- or won’t even nation-build, but sometimes, because of their basic natures, needy egos, and whispering Iagos, they find their way to believing or acting in glaring contradiction to their original promises. When the nation has been scarred by crises like Watergate and Vietnam, it has been because presidents have let their demons overcome experience and common sense.
That is a concise explanation and rationale for Dowd’s approach to opinion journalism. Policy does not matter because promises are often broken. The psychological processes that drive our politicians are what is most important and interesting about government, not the real-world impact of their decisions. Once you adopt such a philosophy it makes sense to focus on Al Gore’s adoption of earth-tones in his wardrobe rather than on his vastly superior qualifications for the job of the presidency.
This is not to say that there isn’t a place for armchair psychology in examining what motivates our leaders, but that task should surely be assumed by people that are trained in psychology. What inner demons drove Bush and Cheney to run our country off the rails? We can all speculate, but none of us should attempt to make a career out of that speculation, nor should we substitute such speculation for more serious examination of the merits of those policies. In the end, what really matters is that Bush and Cheney decided to invade Iraq and to set up unconstitutional procedures for the treatment of detainees and to gut the fourth amendment. I don’t think Dowd is qualified to tell us what neuroses caused them to make those decisions. Therefore, her column is a waste of valuable space and her contribution to the national discourse is mainly a frivolous distraction from what really matters.
