Plagiarism Joe Biden - Essay Example

Joe Bidens Plagiarism Scandals We have all heard the saying that no one is more dishonest than a politician, but this issue is more than a comedic accusation. While plagiarism may be something that people take lightly, thinking that it pertains only to students in academia, it is actually a very serious crime (Park 2003). Plagiarism is the use of others intellectual property without permission or credit given, which is a crime that many elite politicians have been accused of and even caught doing.

Politics is an area that is already filled with criticism, judgment, and deformation of character that every politician should make all possible efforts to appear as honest and ethical. However, this is far from the case for many politicians as they choose another route that they think will lead to success turning away from honesty and ethical behavior. Either during their actual political careers or while working their way up to that position, there are politicians from Barack Obama and Senator Joseph Biden to even foreign politicians amongst the offenders.

Senator Joseph Biden actually had two separate, prominent cases of plagiarism one from his time in law school and another during his political campaigns. While these scandals are material for scrutiny of the individual, there are many more serious and deep implications for that individuals public image the key aspect of whether or not a politician succeeds.Bidens law school misconduct surrounded his grade in one of his undergraduate classes. It turns out that Biden had actually failed one of his courses in 1965 when he used someone elses work for his methodology paper.

When this information was unearthed by the public, Biden was actually forced to back out of the Democratic U.S. Presidential nominations in 1988 and had to attempt to rebuild his reputation up from the bottom (Greenburg 2008). While Biden claimed that the only reason he was accused of plagiarism was due to the supposed fact that he was not aware of the need to cite sources, it is unsure whether or not that is true. However, after facing this issue and taking the step to reporting this case of plagiarism to the Supreme Court in Delaware, his record was wiped clean of these plagiarism accusations (Dionne 1987).

This is simply the first of two unethical choices that created a great rift between the man that Biden put out as being to society and the behavior that he chose.After it seemed as if he should have learned his lesson, Biden was accused, once again, of plagiarism. However, this time around, it was a much more serious claim, as it was one pertaining to his political campaign. It was said that Biden plagiarized parks of his speeches from very well-known individuals, such as Senator Kennedy and a British leader, Kinnock.

When the proof arose of a video showing Biden giving a speech that was entirely the words of Kinnock, it was clear that Biden had no intentions of giving any form of credit to him. To make matters even worse, Biden downplayed the entire event and made it appear as if the media was simply blowing the accusations way out of proportion (Tapper 2007).The implications for these cases of plagiarism are very severe, as it causes a loss of trust, respect, and loyalty to that political member. The weight of trust in ones electoral votes is very heavy because politicians are entrusted with a large amount of responsibility and control over the lives of citizens.

When one is voting to put someone in a position of power over their lives, they most likely want to give that power to a person that they trust. Honesty and trust go hand-in-hand, which means that plagiarism is a direct harm to the trust in a politician. Also, to know that a person has lied and misrepresented his own words, opinions, and ideas make the voters question everything that they have been told by that politician. Trust is a key value in politics that has one of the greatest effects on a politicians future success with the public (Girardin 2012).

Therefore, there are very few things more important to a politician than the trust and loyalty of their voters. The direct implications that can materialize from ones choice to steal others work or ideas is loss of votes, extermination from a campaign, deformation of character, and in severe cases, even being arrested. While Bidens cases of plagiarism were very serious, he is not alone in the mistakes that he made as there are dozens of other publicized cases with even more that are unknown. For instance, in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harpers official, Owen Lippert, fully admitted to plagiarizing a speech that was used to gain support for the war in Iraq.

Lipperts speech was almost word-for-word to one of the speeches that the prime minister in Australia had used only a couple days before this. The implication of this specific case was how Harper was forced to resign (MacCharles 2009). This case is similar to Bidens in many ways because, he too, plagiarized words from another politicians speech and was consequently kicked out of the political campaign at the time. Another example of plagiarism in the political arena is when a Nation Security Advisor of Present George W.

Bush, Condoleezza Rice, accused Saddam Hussein of plagiarizing during his declaration to the United States pertaining to the use of weapons. While Hussein was already viewed as a dishonest person, Rice added the accusation that he used direct words even entire pages of the United Nations information (Rice 2014). Rice used this as a direct way to prove that Iraq was lying about the information that was presented through this text. This specific case of plagiarism with Saddam Hussein is rather different than Bidens as it was an accusation made from a different country with no true effects on their own citizens.

In conclusion, plagiarism is not simply an academic crime, but is a very legitimate reason that people lose even more trust in politicians. There are certain laws that can deem one a criminal under the right circumstances when they are caught plagiarizing because it is a direct violation of ethical law. Ones word is all they have in putting their character out for the public to judge during an election. If these words that are presented to the country come from another persons mouth, there is no longer any reason to believe that they are trustworthy to be given power.

Senator Joe Biden is among the many politicians who had taken the wrong path, both before and during his political career. Outside of the classroom, plagiarism is a direct cause for lack of trust, loss of trust, and, sometimes, the end of a career not just an F on a paper (Maurer, Kappe & Zaka 2006). This should be a lesson to kids, college students and people with jobs all around the world to take their papers and work seriously, at the end of the day your professor or your boss assigns you these assignments to challenge yourself and do good, and no matter how hard the assignment is, always complete it with trust and the same should also be applied to politicians, in this case it is the public who is putting their trust on you, so do your job with integrity and not dishonesty.

References Maurer, H., Kappe, F., & Zaka, B., 2006. Plagiarism: a survey. Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 12, no. 8, pp. 1050-1084. Park, C., 2003. In other (peoples) words: plagiarism by university students--literature and lessons. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 28, no. 5, pp. 471-488. DOI:10.1080/02602930301677(Customer please insert the previous sources that you have cited in-text)