Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Supporters of John Walsh, and there are many, need to be careful how they argue his keep-my-plagiarism-in-context defense, which he presented to the editorial board of the Billings Gazette earlier this week:
Walsh told The Gazette editorial board his 33 years in the National Guard and his performance as a U.S. senator shouldn’t be eclipsed by revelations that he plagiarized portions of a 2007 research paper at the Army War College. The New York Times broke the plagiarism story last week as issues key to the Walsh’s re-election began to emerge in the Senate.
“I’m very hopeful that Montanans will look at my overall career and not just this one serious blemish on my career and evaluate me on the entirety instead of just this one issue,” Walsh said.
It’s a valid defense, and a good one, but it’s based on the concept of forgiving the sinner, not minimizing the sin. Walsh admits his act of plagiarism was seriously wrong, but asks Montanans to keep it in context. He’s done a lot of good in his life, he argues, asking voters to conclude that the good he’s done far outweighs his war college lapse. He seeks forgiveness.
Unfortunately, not everyone defending him understands that. In a letter to the Helena Independent Record, Gary Turcott, invoking the principle that often we learn more from a mistake than from something that went right by accident, argues that the Bay of Pigs fiasco made John Kennedy a better president because “Good leaders learn from their mistakes, and they move forward with a determination not to repeat them.”
Turcott invites us to conclude that the more mistakes a leader makes, the better a leader he becomes. Under that theory, plagiarism becomes a virtue. We should lament that Walsh plagiarized only once, thus depriving himself of opportunities to improve his leadership skills.
The defense of forgiveness and context is valid and strong. The defense that plagiarism isn’t all that bad and actually provides men an opportunity to become better leaders is neither valid nor strong nor forgivable.