It's never a good sign when a presidential candidate is caught cribbing foreign policy notes from Wikipedia -- particularly when that candidate is trying to put himself forward as the more serious and experienced choice in the realm of foreign policy.
A Wikipedia editor emailed Political Wire to point out some similarities between Sen. John McCain's speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. Given the closeness of the words and sentence structure, most would consider parts of McCain's speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia.First instance:
one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)vs.
one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion (McCain)
Taegan Goddard has a couple more examples of this over at the link above for those interested, and they are interesting.
But taking a step back, it's always interesting to think about these stories from the perspective of the shoe being on the other foot -- what would the reaction have been had this story come out in relation to the other candidate. In this case, what would have happened had Barack Obama, not John McCain, been caught cheating on the 3 AM test by appropriating from Wikipedia? Heck, what would have happened if a college student, or even a sixth grader, had been exposed for such actions?
This is a major league embarrassment, one that goes a long way towards undercutting the meme that McCain is untouchable on foreign policy. Yes, it is more likely a case of a staffer writing notes for the candidate failing to do all due diligence in researching the day's talking points, instead cutting a corner too closely by taking cues from Wikipedia, than anything else. Still, a candidate must stand by the words out of his mouth even if not anything else. And if McCain is going to go around borrowing from Wikipedia, or even just paraphrasing the site, it makes less believable the argument that he's a real foreign policy heavyweight.
Update [2008-8-11 20:56:55 by Jonathan Singer]: At least one professor wouldn't be happy getting a paper with these types of similarities.
Update [2008-8-11 22:18:36 by Josh Orton]: But who says McCain doesn't understand the internet??
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