JUST WORDS

SAM SMITH - The assumption held by many is that Obama is exceptionally eloquent. So what happened when Hillary Clinton accused him of relying on words rather than experience? He gave a somewhat immodest speech which inferred he was up there with Martin Luther King and the Declaration of Independence - quoting some of their epic phrases and then adding sardonically, "just words." The words he used to defend his eloquence, however, turned out to have been lifted (or borrowed)from his pal, Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts.

This is not a criminal offense but neither should it pass unnoticed because it sheds light not only on the candidate but on the time in which we live, a time of such persistent illusions that we can easily find ourselves accepting the fake as the real and even praising it as eloquent.

I got to thinking about Obama last night as 12 men competed on American Idol. I suddenly realized why so many contemporary singers leave me uneasy or confused: their words and their facial expressions aren't in sync. One singer crooned an extremely sad lyric as he grinned and flirted with the women in the audience. Another, in a typical pose of the contemporary vocalist, contorted his face as though he was being waterboarded, even while singing lyrics that were maniacally bland.

I mentioned this to a friend, who referred me to a tale by Lesley Stahl of CBS News, describing a critical interview with Ronald Reagan in 1984:

"I knew the piece would have an impact, if only because it was so long: five minutes and 40 seconds, practically a documentary in Evening News terms. I worried that my sources at the White House would be angry enough to freeze me out."

But, reported Bob Somerby in the Daily Howler, that isn't what happened. "When the piece aired, [Dick] Darman called from the White House. 'Way to go, kiddo,' he said to Stahl. 'What a great piece. We loved it.'"

Stahl replied, "Didn't you hear what I said?"

"Nobody heard what you said."

"Come again?"

"You guys in Televisionland haven't figured it out, have you? When the pictures are powerful and emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. I mean it, Lesley. Nobody heard you."

Wrote Somerby, "Stahl's critical report about President Reagan had been accompanied by generally upbeat visuals. According to Darman's theory, the pictures registered more with viewers than anything Stahl had said."

These are our times: when upbeat visuals contradict a critical interview, when you can sing a sad tale and flirt at the same time, and when you can be eloquent while stealing somebody else's cliches. And the participants, the media and the public hardly notice anymore and, when they do, defend it as normal.

So, in Obama's case, I adapted with the thought that if Clinton and Obama were to deadlock, perhaps Deval Patrick could be the perfect compromise candidate - of the same hue as Obama and you'd get the eloquence first hand.

But then I discovered that Governor Patrick had an approval rating of only 48% so maybe these eloquent black Harvard Law grads get boring after a while.

Then I read today that some of the younger voters may be thinking of Obama as like so yesterday. Does that mean that we don't have to like consider him eloquent anymore?

Isn't living in a fantasy fun?

JAKE TAPPER, ABC NEWS - Speaking to the New York Times Sunday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick attempted to excuse his friend Sen. Barack Obama's lifting of part of his October 2006 "Just words" speech.

"In a telephone interview on Sunday, Mr. Patrick said that he and Mr. Obama first talked about the attacks from their respective rivals last summer, when Mrs. Clinton was raising questions about Mr. Obama's experience, and that they discussed them again last week," the Times' Jeff Zeleny wrote. "Patrick said he told Mr. Obama that he should respond to the criticism, and he shared language from his campaign with Mr. Obama's speechwriters."

But Obama was quoted using Patrick's language before the Summer of 2007.

"'We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal.' Those are just words," Obama was quoted as saying in a March 19, 2007 New Republic story. " 'I have a dream.' Just words."

So the claim that Patrick an Obama "first" discussed this last summer does not make sense.

It should also be noted that in addition to the "Yes We Can" slogan that Obama used in 2004, Patrick used in 2006, and Obama uses today, other language from the two clients of political guru David Axelrod has come from both men's mouths.

To wit:

Patrick in June 2006, at the Massachusetts Democratic party convention: "I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."

Obama one year later, as quoted in USA Today: "I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me. I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations."

Just words?

DANA MILBANK, WASH POST - In recent days, he has been exposed as a high-risk borrower, accused of taking everything from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick's "just words" riff on the power of oratory to Bob the Builder's refrain for preschoolers, "Yes, we can!"

And he borrowed anew on Tuesday at an outdoor rally in San Antonio -- this time from former rival John Edwards. Criticizing pharmaceutical companies' ads, Obama joked: "You know those ads where people are running around the fields, you know, they're smiling, you don't know what the drug is for?"

Compare that with this staple of the 2004 Edwards stump speech: "I love the ads. Buy their medicine, take it, and the next day you and your spouse will be skipping through the fields."

Hillary Clinton's campaign has done all it can to spread word of Obama's borrowing problems. On Tuesday morning, it sent out an e-mail with the headline from a Chicago Sun-Times story, "Loan Crisis Hits Obama." . . .

Potentially more objectionable are the many lines Obama has lifted from Edwards, whose campaign compiled a list of the offenses before the candidate dropped out of the race.

Here's Obama's announcement speech in February 2007: "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

Compare that with Edwards's 2003 announcement speech: "I haven't spent most of my life in politics, but I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change Washington."

Some of the common phrases are too cliched to qualify for lending privileges, but others seem to be more than coincidence. "We need a president not afraid to use the word 'union,' " Edwards told an audience of steelworkers in July 2007. "We need a president . . . who is not afraid to mention unions," Obama said a month later. Edwards, accepting the party's vice presidential nomination in 2004, said, "Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth." Obama, in turn, has been heard to say, "We shouldn't just be respecting wealth in this country, we should be respecting work."

The likely nexus: top Obama adviser David Axelrod, who played a similar role for Patrick in 2006 and for Edwards in 2004. That, in turn, may explain why both Patrick and Obama adopted the signature phrase of animated handyman Bob the Builder. "Can we build it? Yes, we can! Can we fix it? Yes, we can!". . .

ADAM REILLY, BOSTON PHOENIX, JAN 17, 2008 - Here in Massachusetts, though, Obama's oratory can also trigger deja vu. His compelling message sounds a lot like the one that Deval Patrick - who's known Obama for years, and who, like Obama, is a client of Democratic media consultant David Axelrod - used during his successful 2006 gubernatorial campaign. . . As David Kravitz, an editor of the liberal blog Blue Mass. Group, wrote after Iowa: "There was always lots of similarity, but it's getting really dramatic."

This Patrick-Obama parallelism hasn't gone unnoticed in the press. In April 2007, after a New York Times Magazine profile of Axelrod mentioned it in passing, the Boston Globe examined it in greater depth two weeks later. And this past weekend - after the Globe noted the two politicians' fondness for the phrase "Yes we can!" in a story on Patrick's decision to stump for Obama in South Carolina - the Associated Press ran a bigger piece on the subject. . .

Of course, no politician creates his or her message out of whole cloth. But the parallels between Patrick and Obama's messages are so close that they could end up limiting Obama's ability to play the authenticity card. . .

- Patrick in an October 2006 speech on Boston Common, where he hammered Republican candidate Kerry Healey for a controversial ad linking Patrick to a convicted rapist: "Hers is a politics of fear. Ours is a politics of hope."

- Obama in April 2007, responding to Republican Rudy Giuliani's suggestion that America will suffer another big terrorist attack if a Democrat wins in 2008: "Rudy Giuliani today has taken the politics of fear to a new low, and I believe Americans are ready to reject those kind of politics."

BOSTON GLOBE, APR 16 2007 - Of all the things Deval Patrick's Republican opponent threw at him in last year's governor's race, one charge that stuck in his craw was that his speeches were more fluff than substance -- that they were, in Patrick's telling, "just words." So he devised an artful response.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal' -- just words," Patrick said at a rally in Roxbury right before Election Day. " 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself' -- just words. . . . 'I have a dream' -- just words. They're all just words."

The crowd erupted as it got Patrick's point about the power of language. But perhaps no one at the rally understood the point better than Barack Obama, who had joined him on stage that night.

Not five months later, Obama, his presidential campaign gaining steam, had this to say about legendary Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky in The New Republic: "Sometimes the tendency in community organizing of the sort done by Alinsky was to downplay the power of words and of ideas when in fact ideas and words are pretty powerful. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal.' Those are just words. 'I have a dream.' Just words.". . .

The similarities between Patrick and Obama, who have known each other for more than a decade, are obvious: Both are idealistic African-American leaders who came of age after the Civil Rights movement. Both have Chicago roots, a Harvard Law degree, and a gift for appealing to both blacks and whites.

Their political likeness runs deeper. Both believe that people long for a new dawn of post-partisan, hopeful, and optimistic public leadership. Both staked their fates on grass-roots activism and fund-raising. Both campaign on supplanting cynicism with citizenship. . .

Obama is facing the same charge Patrick did last year: that he's long on atmospherics and short on specifics. Patrick overcame that critique, but Obama, given the unprecedented media scrutiny of a presidential campaign, won't have it so easy, Payne said.

"I think there's a lesson . . . for Obama that things you may be able to get away with in a statewide campaign, let's say, you're not going to get away with in a national campaign," he said.

ADRIAN WALKER, BOSTON GLOBE, 20006- Patrick likes to say he wants to run on the issues, though I for one wish he had offered more specifics about them. It's easy to say the governor and Legislature haven't shown much vision on healthcare and education; it's a lot harder to say what one would do instead, other than "lead." A lot of the Patrick message remains squishy. His greatest strength at this point is himself -- his life story and charisma.

AP - Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential rival John Edwards, has suggested Obama's signature theme was in fact lifted from her husband's 2004 presidential campaign -- and noted Axelrod worked for Edwards that year. "You listen to the language of what people say, particularly Obama, who seems to be using a lot of John's 2004 language," Edwards said in the August issue of The Progressive magazine. Axelrod said there are common themes, but no copying.

DANA MILBANK, WASH POST - Then, on Saturday night, Obama responded to Clinton's criticism by borrowing, nearly word for word and without attribution, a favorite passage from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. "Don't tell me words don't matter. 'I have a dream' -- just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal' -- just words. 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself' -- just words."

On Tuesday morning, the Clinton campaign publicized another case of Obama apparently appropriating Patrick's words: a quote from last year ("I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me; I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations") that was strikingly similar to one that Patrick uttered a year earlier ("I am not asking anyone to take a chance on me; I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations").

Still, Obama seemed to borrow anew on Tuesday at an outdoor rally in San Antonio -- this time from former foe John Edwards. Criticizing pharmaceutical companies' ads, Obama joked: "You know those ads where people are running around the fields, you know, they're smiling, you don't know what the drug is for?"

Compare that with this staple of Edwards's 2004 stump speech: "I love the ads. Buy their medicine, take it, and the next day you and your spouse will be skipping through the fields."

The likely nexus: top Obama adviser David Axelrod, who played a similar role for Patrick in 2006 and for Edwards in 2004. That may explain the list of lines Obama lifted from Edwards -- whose campaign compiled a list of the offenses before the candidate dropped out of the race.

Here's Obama's announcement speech in February 2007: "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

Compare that with Edwards's 2003 announcement speech: "I haven't spent most of my life in politics, but I've spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change Washington."

"We need a president not afraid to use the word 'union,' " Edwards told a steelworker audience in July 2007. "We need a president . . . who is not afraid to mention unions," Obama said a month later. Edwards, accepting the party's vice presidential nomination in 2004, said, "Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth." Obama, in turn, has been heard to say, "We shouldn't just be respecting wealth in this country, we should be respecting work."

Axelrod, the Obama strategist who authored many of the phrases the candidate borrowed from Edwards and Patrick, preceded the senator to the floor. On the jumbo screen, the campaign played a music video by the Black Eyed Peas' "will.i.am." Its title, "Yes We Can," is a signature slogan of the Obama campaign -- and before that, of Deval Patrick, not to mention César Chávez and Bob the Builder.

A chant of "Yes, we can" filled the arena, and Obama, emerging underneath a banner honoring basketball great Hakeem Olajuwon, enjoyed a reception the Houston Rockets would envy. "The American people have spoken out, and they've said we need to move in a new direction," Obama told the arena.

Whoever first uttered the words that followed, it didn't much matter: On the arena floor, they were drowned out by deafening cheers.