Spin Cycle

The Obama-Deval Patrick borrowed-words story that the Clinton campaign has been pushing got a good run on the network news last night -- the first or second story on all three. It didn't dominate front pages -- and appears midway through the Milwaukee paper's main campaign story -- but got a good run.

Actually, there's history to the story. Way back in April of last year, the Boston Globe noticed that Obama was using Patrick's Massachusetts campaign as a blueprint, and had been taken by the very rhetoric that is now at issue.

From the top of that Globe story:

"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."

The story goes on to describe how Obama had used a similar quote in an interview with The New Republic. Which means that this issue -- if it is one -- goes back in the public record for nine months. It's been sitting there.

We heard Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson say on morning TV today that he had never heard this particular Obama "riff" before Saturday night. But if his research operation was up to snuff, he must have read it before. And they certainly were quick to try turn this particular molehill into a mountain when the opportunity arose....

It's comforting to know that even though the candidate is focused on issues that matter to working Americans, her operatives aren't.