Will this Presidential campaign be remembered as the Xerox campaign? Will Xerox sales soar? Has Shallow Nation just done some product placement for Batman: The Dark Knight 2008?

Hillary Rodham Clinton accused presidential rival Barack Obama of political plagiarism Thursday night, but drew boos from a Democratic debate audience when she ridiculed him as the candidate of “change you can Xerox.”

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Clinton went into the debate needing a change in the course of the campaign, and waited patiently for an opening to try to diminish her rival, seated inches away on the stage. “I think you can tell from the first 45 minutes Senator Obama and I have a lot in common,” she said.

Barely pausing for breath, she went on to say there were differences.

First, she said she had seen a supporter of Obama interviewed on television recently, and unable to name a single accomplishment the Illinois senator had on his record.

“Words are important and words matter but actions speak louder than words,” she said.

Obama agreed with that, then noted that Clinton lately had been urging voters to turn against him by saying, “let’s get real.”

“And the implication is that the people who’ve been voting for me or are involved in my campaign are somehow delusional,” Obama said.

Clinton also raised Obama’s use in his campaign speeches of words first uttered by his friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

“If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words,” she said. “…Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”

The debate audience booed.

Obama said the entire controversy was evidence of a “silly season” that the public finds dispiriting. Besides, he said of his speeches at one point, “I’ve got to admit, some of them are pretty good.”

Here is the original video of the “Change You Can Xerox” statement from the February 21, 2008 Democratic Debate.



Here is a compilation video of Hilary Clinton doing some xeroxing of her own.



UPDATE: Daniel W. Drezner has uncovered other incidents of Hillary Clinton at the Xerox machine.

Hillary Clinton, later on in the same debate: “You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”

Jack Stanton speech, in Primary Colors (New York: Random House, 1996), p. 162: “Y’know, I’ve taken some hits in this campaign. It hasn’t been easy for me, or my family. It hasn’t been fair, but it hasn’t been anything compared to the hits a lot of you take every day.”