Adios, Tim Goeglein

"I've been plagiarizing all my life. It's called learning."

-- Hunter S. Thompson

The discovery (for which Nancy Nall deserves credit) that White House aide Tim Goeglein plagiarized material in columns he published in his hometown paper has led to his resignation:

A longtime aide to President Bush who wrote occasional guest columns for his hometown newspaper resigned on Friday evening after admitting that he had repeatedly plagiarized from other writers. ...
The aide, Tim Goeglein, had worked for Mr. Bush since 2001, as a liaison to social and religious conservatives, an important component of the president’s political base. ...
“This is not acceptable, and we are disappointed in Tim’s actions,” a White House spokeswoman, Emily Lawrimore, said Friday morning, hours before Mr. Goeglein resigned. “He is offering no excuses, and he agrees it was wrong.”
Mr. Goeglein, 44, is little known outside Washington. ...
With Mr. Bush traveling to his ranch in Crawford, Tex., for the weekend, the White House issued a statement late Friday saying that the president was disappointed and saddened for Mr. Goeglein and his family.
“He has long appreciated Tim’s service,” the statement said. “And he knows him to be a good person who is committed to his country.”
Mr. Goeglein had been publishing guest columns on the opinion page of The News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne [Indiana] for more than a decade, according to the paper’s editor, Kerry Hubartt.

Plagiarism is unacceptable in any context, but it's simply inexplicable that anyone would plagiarize for a column. Almost by definition, the columnist is expressing his idiosyncratic perspective, or else -- in the case of a news-oriented columnist like Robert Novak -- reporting exclusive information. To use the format of a personal column as a venue for plagiarism strikes me as utterly nonsensical.

Surely, Goeglein must have some explanation. Perhaps the column for the Indiana paper was just an attempt to maintain a print presence in his hometown, so that when his White House gig ended, he'd still be a known quantity (and valuable commodity) back home.

Whatever the reason, it was an unworthy abuse of the press, and a fraud perpetrated on readers.

More reaction at Outside the Beltway, Hot Air and Memeorandum.