Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
He plagiarized large parts of a paper he submitted for his masters degree from the Army’s war college. He committed a willful act of intellectual dishonesty. He stole. There may be an explanation, but there’s no defense for what he did. Officers and gentlemen do not gundeck term papers, official reports, or any other documents. They just don’t. He couldn’t plead justification, although his short-lived PTSD defense was an attempt to do just that (and itself raised serious questions about his fitness to serve in high elective office). He could only beg forgiveness. But Montanans were not in a forgiving mood. They rightly concluded his sin went to character, to judgment, to fitness to lead, and his begging for moral charity left him with an empty tin cup. He is, I believe, fundamentally a good man with a long record of public service — but also a man with a flaw that disqualifies him for public office. He did the honorable thing when he withdrew his candidacy.
Some Democrats, angry and disillusioned, are directing their fury at the New York Times for reporting his plagiarism, and at unsympathetic editors at Montana’s major daily newspapers. Plagiarism isn’t all that big a deal, they contend, and Walsh should not have been denounced as a thief of intellectual property and encouraged to end his candidacy. In the view of these Democrats, which is sincere, Walsh should be forgiven his plagiarism and the newspapers shouldn't make a big deal out of his war college misadventure. I profoundly disagree. That argument sends to students everywhere the message that plagiarism isn’t that big a deal, which is not a message that ever should be sent to any student.
Worse for Walsh may be yet to come. The war college may revoke his degree, grinding his name off the bronze plaque listing the college’s graduates. Were he still on the ballot and that happened, Steve Daines, the Republican Party, and right wing PACs would begin running Walsh the Defrocked ads in addition to the Walsh the Reprimanded and Walsh the Plagiarist ads already running. You can imagine the visual of sparks flying as his name is ground from the plaque. Even if he were underwater in the polls, those ads would be run because they would blacken the Democratic brand, discouraging Democrats from voting and hurting John Lewis and down-ticket Democratic candidates. Walsh’s withdrawal spares his fellow Democrats from being spattered with the mud that would have been slung at him.
John Walsh’s fate involves tragedy, and certainly invites literary references. But he — and he alone — brought it on himself.