"Pathetic"

John McCain's speechwriting team, in a hurry to say something "maverickish" (or "truthy") about the absolute foreign-policy (and human rights) catastrophe going on in Georgia, plagiarizes Wikipedia. Bowers nails it:

Lifting your report on a subject directly from an encyclopedia is something most people are encouraged to stop doing in, oh, about the sixth grade. If you, your policy team, and your speech writing team are still doing it when commenting on an international crisis while running for President of the United States, that's both pathetic and scary.

I'm a university educator, and I know from plagiarism, particularly of the cut-and-paste variety. If the best that Team McCain can muster is something we break our freshmen of within one semester, where the hell does the electorate think he's gonna generate original quality thinking?

Pathetic is right. And, as a potential Commander-in-Chief, dangerous.