Tim Goeglein: Plagiarist, Republican heavyweight

An internal investigation by the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel has revealed former White House aide Tim Goeglein was a serial plagiarist who lifted material for 20 of the 38 columns he wrote for the paper:

An internal investigation begun Friday has revealed that since 2000 Goeglein plagiarized 20 of 38 columns The News-Sentinel published. A review of his columns prior to 2000 continues. According to Editor & Publisher, an industry publication, Goeglein also was discovered to have plagiarized in writings published by The Washington Post and The New York Sun. He lifted material without proper attribution from sources including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and New York Sun. He even went as far as to use a quote from Pope John Paul II as his own. [News-Sentinel]

Goeglein resigned as deputy director of the office of public liason after a blogger discovered that one of Goeglein's recent "efforts" for the News-Sentinel had been copied almost word-for-word from an essay in the Dartmouth Review.

Goeglein's former title may not sound impressive, but he was much more than a PR flack. He carried on liaisons, not with the public at large, but with the leaders of the Christian Right. According to this 2004 profile in the Washington Post, Goeglein was quite the bigshot in the Bush administration:

Officially, Goeglein, a 40-year-old who looks as if he would be carded trying to buy a beer, is deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison, one of four White House political departments run by uberstrategist Karl Rove. Yet Goeglein's role is much more central to how this president operates -- and wins elections -- than the job title suggests, according to several Republicans outside and inside the White House.

It is Goeglein's job to make sure conservatives are happy, in the loop and getting their best ideas before the president and turned into laws. With Goeglein's assistance, Christian conservatives, for instance, were successful in lobbying Bush to push for abstinence-first funding to combat AIDS and speak out against the persecution of Christians in Sudan, according to Charles W. Colson, an evangelical Christian who works closely with Bush and Goeglein. (Emphasis added.) [WaPo]

Read the whole article. It contains an run-down of Goeglein's impeccable conservative credentials and a detailed description of how Karl Rove used the taxpayer-funded offices of public liaison, intergovernmental affairs, political affairs and strategic initiatives to coordinate with his party's political base.

Fun fact: Rove's close friend and colleague Bill Canary, the Alabama Republican heavyweight at the center of the Don Siegelman prosecution scandal, served as a special assistant in the office of intergovernmental affairs from 1989 to 1991. Rumor has it that Canary lost that job because he told his bosses in the George H. W. Bush administration that he was a lawyer, but neglected to mention that he hadn't passed the bar. If anyone has documentary evidence to support this claim, please let me know. I heard it from several Alabama political insiders who remember when Canary "the carpetbagger" showed up in their state.

I wonder if they'll send Goeglein to the colonies with a remittance, too...

Comments

[Eric Jaffa]

RE "Karl Rove used the taxpayer-funded offices of public liaison, intergovernmental affairs, political affairs and strategic initiatives to coordinate with his party's political base."

Exactly what is wrong with that?

I want people who work in an administration to discuss public policy with people outside the government.

For example, I hope that a year from now, a President Obama is meeting with the leaders of "Save the Internet" in the White House to discuss Net Neutrality.

[shrimplate]

I want to push political protections of internet neutrality, too. But that's not really the sort of thing these Repubs are up too, is it?

One of the possible reasons behind such episodes of obvious plagiarism is that Goeglein knows that the people who make up his political base don't read. So it doesn't seem likely to him that he might get busted for it.

Their base lives in "Dumbfuckistan." Not the lefty blogworld where everything gets ripped and vetted three seconds after it appears on the internets-googly-thingies.

[shrimplate]

I want to push political protections of internet neutrality, too. But that's not really the sort of thing these Repubs are up to, is it?

One of the possible reasons behind such episodes of obvious plagiarism is that Goeglein knows that the people who make up his political base don't read. So it doesn't seem likely to him that he might get busted for it.

Their base lives in "Dumbfuckistan." Not the lefty blogworld where everything gets ripped and vetted three seconds after it appears on the internets-googly-thingies.

[cfrost]

“He even went as far as to use a quote from Pope John Paul II as his own”

Who are we to doubt? God apparently speaks to him and the pope.

[moe99]

I think that folks should know that the blogger who outed Goeglein and is now taking some heat from it from the conservative wing of the Republican party, has a very well written and entertaining blog:

www.nancynall.com

Nancy deserves credit for researching this and then for going to the News Sentinel the day before she publicized it as a courtesy to them. Very professional behaviour.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

There's a fine line between legitimate outreach and partisan political activity. For example, talking with religious leaders about social services is fine. Coordinating evangelical voter mobilization drives for Bush is bad.

Rove is notorious for disregarding ethical boundaries and co-mingling Republican party politics with the people's business.

Rove has a long history of brazenly using public resources to get Republicans elected. This is a guy who repeatedly lectured non-political staff at the DOI and the GSA about how they could swing key House races!

I strongly suspect that under Rove, the OPL was an arm of the Republican party. The next administration may use the OPL and its sister offices more responsibly and for good.

[DJA]

Goeglin apparently also fancied himself a music critic -- although not so much so that he wouldn't plaigerize that, too.

[skippy]

their base lives in "dumbfuckistan."

it's called "the heartland."

it's not called "the brainland."

[greensmile]

the bush league has devalued the currency of honesty in government even more than it has the dollar. This case is almost funny to me however since is is a deal between two devils: "our administration will act as if there is no separation of church and state if your churches will act as if our representative has a shred of credibility."

[Ba'al]

Every time a wingnut wack-o is publicly humiliated the Baby Jesus cries, but never forget the redemptive power of wingnut welfare. This fool will be taken care of.

Some of the crap he was writing had the same pretentious pseudo-academic tone as David Brooks. If Brooks was caught plagiarizing, that would make my decade.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

If Brooks was caught plagiarizing, that would make my decade.

Mine too.

But Brooks can certainly avoid that trap, by the time-tested GOP technique of "making shit up". It may be fiction, but it's original fiction.

[stm177]

Hmm, I remember some fictional story about a student who decides to plagiarize a poem out of an obscure book. She is horrified when her poem gets nominated for an award to be given out in a ceremony at a local university.

She doesn't win the award, and one of the professors comes up to talk to her after the presentation. He whispers to her "I loved the poem but I didn't vote for you, since I wrote it!"