GRAY WHO?:

Character counts: Davis' "accidental homage" to truth (Los Angeles Daily News, January 11, 2003)

It says a lot about the state of California's leadership that Gov. Gray Davis blatantly plagiarized a 10-year-old State of the Union speech by President Bill Clinton in delivering his State of the State address last week.

Instead of rising to the occasion of what was widely seen as the most important speech of his long and lackluster political career, Davis sank to a new low by setting the scene for his message -- these are tough times and we all have to make sacrifices -- with words and ideas stolen from the mouth of Clinton.

Yet, plagiarism is the least of Davis' sins.

His real failings go deeper, right to the heart of his character -- or the lack of it. [...]

He has never found the courage to take any responsibility for the energy crisis even though he ignored the growing problem for months until it became a catastrophe. And his solution was to spend tens of billions of dollars of the public's money and blame everyone else in the world except himself.

And he made it perfectly clear in his State of the State address last week that he takes no responsibility now for the budget crisis. It's the fault of the national economy, of the president, of anybody but him.

The most remarkable thing about Mr. Davis is that he's the governor of the biggest state in the Union and despite just winning re-election, he's not a plausible candidate for President. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2003 11:21 PM