Melania Trump's plagiarism is first thing not original about the tycoon's campaign

The controversy will likely soon be overtaken – by another

The controversy will likely soon be overtaken by another (AP)

Whatever its failings, Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency has been nothing if not original. Until now.

The consolation is that almost certainly, allegations that his wife Melania borrowed from Michelle Obama in her speech to the Republican convention on Monday night, will quickly be forgotten.

For people who make their living with words – be they writers or politicians – accusations of plagiarism can quickly become a nightmare. Just ask Joe Biden, the current vice president, whose campaign for the 1988 Democratic nomination was torpedoed by the revelation that he had plagiarised Neil Kinnock, the then leader of the Labour Party in Britain, for a chunk of his standard campaign stump speech.


 
 (AP)

Or take Doris Kearns Goodwin, the eminent historian whose reputation and credibility took a grievous hit in 2002 when it was proven she had used sentences almost verbatim from other works for a book about the Kennedys, without citing her source. Goodwin’s stock is again high, but the incident at one point seriously threatened her career.

The plagiarism curse can strike in Europe as well. In 2011 Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was forced to resign as Germany’s Defence Minister when it emerged he had copied parts of his doctoral thesis at Bayreuth University decades earlier. The minister admitted “severe errors of workmanship” but it was not enough to spare him.

Melania Trump’s sin seems less grave. She is not a presidential candidate, and she does not make speeches or write for a living like Goodwin. Nor does her plagiarism seem egregious – just two or three platitudinous sentences that anyone could have come up with. It is highly embarrassing to be sure, given the visceral dislike of Trump supporters for anything to do with the Obamas, and the distraction from the real point of the speech – into which the campaign had put a vast amount of effort – that her husband should appear in a fresh and softer light.

But given the lurid headlines Trump generates on a virtually daily basis, and the countless falsehoods, misrepresentations and exaggerations he peddles, it will surely be quickly overtaken by some other incident or controversy.

The real lesson is that in this computerised age, when quotations and texts can be compared in an instant by an internet search tool, plagiarism is all but impossible to conceal. Just a few hours elapsed between the delivery of the speech and the accusations that Melania Trump had copied Michelle Obama.