Matt Latimer is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is currently a co-partner in Javelin, a literary agency and communications firm based in Alexandria, and contributing editor at Politico Magazine.

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”

No, this isn't another pilfered quote in Melania Trump's unfortunate fail Monday night. But it adequately captures what happened. This was supposed to be an easy home run for Team Trump—and do-no-harm speech by an attractive, intelligent immigrant who knows the GOP nominee as well as anyone. And for about 10 minutes, in the immediate afterglow of the pleasant if not provocative speech, that's what it was. Personally, I would have preferred if Mrs. Trump had offered more specifics about her husband—some inside-the-golden-palace anecdotes that revealed him in a different light. But what we got was fine—a seemingly sincere recitation of her husband's better attributes, and delivered fairly flawlessly by someone whose first language is not English.


Then every speechwriter’s nightmare commenced.

As a former speechwriter myself, I confess to having a teensy bit of sympathy for the poor unfortunate who will now most likely be exiled to writing speeches for local railroad commissioners. And I can even manage a guess at how this latest PR disaster happened.

The dirty secret of political speechwriting is that pretty much everything that could be said in a speech has been said already. The trick is to take a clichéd sentiment—America is great, my husband is a leader, we're tired of politicians—and make it sound original. The logical first step in such an enterprise is to take a close look at speeches from the past. Almost certainly, Mrs. Trump's speechwriter amassed a collection of prior remarks by other wives of presidential candidates—Ann Romney, Laura Bush and, portentously, Michelle Obama.

Melania Trump Is in Good Company

Donald Trump’s wife isn’t the first political figure to face plagiarism charges.

By Taylor Gee Joe Biden

In the 1988 campaign, plagiarism killed a candidacy. During a debate in Iowa, Joe Biden gave a stirring speech that cited his ancestors, but he forgot to cite the speech’s original orator: UK Labour leader Neil Kinnock. Biden, who had cited Kinnock in previous speeches, would maybe have been forgiven if it hadn't then come out that the presidential hopeful had once failed a class in law school for similar plagiaristic transgressions. The future vice president withdrew his candidacy shortly after, claiming the essence of his campaign had been obscured by “the exaggerated shadow” of past mistakes. Rand Paul

Rand Paul has in multiple instances failed to attribute borrowed language to original sources. BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski reported that in a 2012 speech Paul pilfered language from Wikipedia, and Politico’s Alexander Burns discovered that in a 2013 response to Obama’s State of the Union, Paul copied elements of a 2011 Associated Press report word for word. Even a chapter of Paul’s book, Government Bullies, heavily appropriated the work of conservative think tanks. While Paul admitted his staff could have done better with footnotes, he mostly fought back, saying that the charges were the effort of “haters” determined to bring him down. Barack Obama

In 2008, the Clinton campaign accused Barack Obama of lifting language from a 2016 speech by Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Obama responded by claiming that Patrick, a friend of his, suggested he borrow the lines. The presidential hopeful did admit that he should have given credit where credit was due, but couldn’t resist adding, “I noticed Senator Clinton, on occasion, has used words of mine as well.” Anthony Albanese

In 2012, the Australian Transport Minister Anthony Albanese had some harsh words for opposition leader Tony Abbott. Unfortunately, they weren’t his words. Reporters familiar with the 1995 movie, The American President, quickly identified three lines spoken by Albanese as having originated in the famous speech given by fictional president Andrew Shepherd. The Liberal Party of Australia quickly uploaded a video of the two speeches side-by-side titled “Albo, you’re no Michael Douglas.” Ben Carson

Buzzfeed reported in 2015 that Ben Carson’s book, America the Beautiful, had taken passages from the conspicuously named website, www.socialismsucks.net. The book additionally borrowed language from conservative historians Bill Federer and Cleon Skousen, although Carson did thank Federer in the acknowledgements. Carson was quick to apologize, explaining that he attempted to thoroughly cite his sources but “inadvertently missed some.”

Of course, those are guides, not scripts from which one might pick and choose. A certain professionalism is expected. When I worked on a convention speech for President George W. Bush in 2008, very little was left to chance. We had drafted the speech weeks in advance, had carefully vetted it to make sure everything was accurate, and then rehearsed it with the president multiple times before a teleprompter. I still remember Bush including a line about our nominee, John McCain, that referenced his time as a prisoner of war: "His arms may have been broken—but not his honor.” One of two aides massaged that one line numerous times, trying to get the president to put long, dramatic pauses between each of the words. It never worked quite right, and Bush was the one who ultimately realized it. The point is there was nothing too small that missed our notice. Mistakes can still happen in speeches, of course, but they are minimized when the process is professional.

This time the process plainly was more fast and loose. What was perhaps the worst crime in the plagiarized passage from Michelle Obama was that the quote itself was so banal. At least in other plagiarism scandals—President Barack Obama borrowing lines from his friend Deval Patrick, for example, in 2008—the lines had some literary quality. This was an unforced error in its lowest form, like copying a Hallmark card. The Trump camp, and Melania herself, only made things worse by issuing contradictory statements about the speech. The would-be first lady told the Today Show's Matt Lauer on Monday before her speech that she wrote it herself “with as little help as possible." But after she was accused of plagiarism, the Trump campaign released a statement, saying Melania had a "team of writers" working with her who “took notes on her life's inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking." Regardless, this wouldn't have happened in an organized campaign.

In a normal speechwriting process, all major speeches are seen by more than a few eyeballs—vetted by senior staff, fact checkers and a proofreader. At the White House, even the most rudimentary speech is read by about a dozen people (if not more). This is also a terrible process for any writer since their words are invariably dumbed down by some political operative or second-guessed by some literal-minded lawyer, or rewritten by some staff person with a literary bent who has the great American novel in his desk drawer.

In this case, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the writer jotted down some thoughts at the last minute, showed it to practically no one and then loaded it in the teleprompter. Sad!

The brouhaha—which will burn out in a few days; we are speaking of an aspiring first lady after all, not the president—demonstrates anew the disadvantage of a spontaneous, freewheeling enterprise that actively disdains experienced professionals. I'm no defender of the "establishment"—if that still exists—and Trump's hostility toward them is a major part of his appeal.

But the primaries are over. This is the big time now. It's time for the Trump team to act like it.