Reply #4: Some gist for the mill:

[PurityOfEssence]

The comparison is pretty obvious: consequences for a misstep. Although Biden credited Kinnock when giving this slightly altered speech, the one time he didn't was caught on tape and this forced him out of the race. Plagiarism is pretty disgusting, and it's a legitimate strike against one's character. The fact that this may have been a clumsy omission is open to debate, and even if credited, it was certainly a bit on the shady side to say the least. Still, the reaction to it was a bit extreme when all the facts were laid out, and Dukakis fired the person responsible for it as a result.

I contend that what Obama's done here is much worse. I'm sure I could have worded it more obviously, but I thought it was pretty clear. I'm not intimating that Obama plagiarized anything: his transgressions have been perfectly original, if not particular creative.

For what Biden did, he had to slink back into the shadows, fight to restore his reputation and eat humble pie for many, many years until rehabilitated in our eyes. (Okay, he was still a Senator, that's not too bad a gig.) This all seems completely disproportionate.

Some seem to think that Obama's quasi-repudiation of McClurkin while he still reaps the harvest of the guy's bigoted rabble-rousing is just fine. I don't. Many don't. The observation was that one man paid two decades worth of penance for something far less unethical, while many think the other shouldn't get much but the passing backlash of this board. Quite a few seem to think that even that's an undue inconvenience.

It's still early. We shall see.