John Walsh and Plagiarism: 7 Ways to Make it All Go Away

I’m sure by now you’ve heard how John Walsh plagiarized up to 79% of a master's-level paper when he was 46 years old.

This debacle will go down in the state's history, I have a feeling. A little more than 3 months to the election and now we've got this huge issue of trust. Many people are still talking of Walsh's time in the National Guard and the scandals there. Now this, which really...how do you defend this?

I see no way. And I don't know if that Senate seat will still be Walsh's come January, not after this. The Daines campaign can have a field day on the TV ads for the next three months, questioning Walsh's character over and over and over again. How do you recover from that?

I don't know what can be done. This is a huge shocker and I really wish we could have known about this before the primary. It would have affected my vote.

So how does John Walsh spin this? How does he turn it around? How do we ensure that we’re not seeing things like this Tweet from Bob Brigham:

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So we’ve got 19 days to find a replacement…oh boy. That’s sure not going to help us Democrats defeat Steve Daines come November, now is it? Wouldn’t it be better to hang on to what we’ve got, perhaps find a way to gain back those poll increases we just saw, and maybe even turn this stumble into a stepping stone?

Perhaps I’m dreaming, but it’s got to be more effective than this tweet from Missoula representative Ellie Hill:

That kind of circling of the wagons just looks desperate at this point. No shame in coming out and airing the dirty laundry when everyone’s already seen us running naked through the yard, after all.

So instead of that jazz on the Twitter I think it’d be better to put up some strategy. Here are 7 things John Walsh can do to turn this plagiarism mess around:

• Put the Paper on Amazon: Why not turn the damn thing into an eBook and get it up on Amazon? I could have that sucker up in 24 hours, I know it, and with the right cover and all this publicity it’d sell. That’s a helluva way to gain donations for the campaign, especially when you put the account under someone else’s name and donate all the proceeds to PTSD charities or something similar.
  

• Walk Across the State: Max Baucus did it in ’76 and he wasn’t even in trouble. This adds an air of penance to the whole affair, and with a few flagellations in front of the right crowds there just might be enough sympathy votes to keep that seat in November.
  

• Untie One Arm: You can’t battle Steve Daines and his rich Republican and corporate backers with one arm tied behind your back. Unhook that southpaw and come out swinging, hitting Daines where he doesn’t like it, exactly the things he’s touting. Really dig deep into the inner hopes, desires and fears of the electorate and bring out that Chinese outsourcing and the xenophobic feelings that go with it. Hold no bars against Daines’ political donors, and shame him and them in the process. It’s time to fight now, or die.
  

• Fix the VA: Senator Jon Tester said he wanted to fix that damn VA healthcare system we’ve got before Congress takes its recess in August. Solving that conundrum would go a helluva long way in gaining voters’ trust here in Montana, especially since we’ve got 102,986 veterans in the state. Since many of us think getting Congress to do anything even when it doesn’t have a recess coming up is impossible, maybe just getting a lot of PTSD funding for Montana veterans would help.
  

• Create a Lot of Jobs: You might have read my post comparing jobs in Utah and Montana in the Oil and Tech fields. We looked at an oil company creating 100 jobs and a communications company creating 1,000. If ever there were some strings that John Walsh built up in his short time in Washington, now would be the time to pull them. Get us a lot of jobs in a struggling economy and that will cause a lot of people to forget just about anything.
  

• Encourage Schweitzer to Talk: Now, this might be harder than many people think these days, but convincing MSNBC to get Montana’s former governor Brian Schweitzer to talk on the air again might just allow him to put his foot in his mouth so far that everyone in the country – and perhaps the world – forgets everything about John Walsh, which shouldn’t be too hard to do since no one ever really knew the guy in the first place.
  

• Pull a Henry IV: Perhaps you’ve heard of the famous Walk to Canossa made by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in 1077 AD. No? Well, at that time the emperor had royally pissed off the pope and had to march to his castle and sit in the snow on his knees for three days and three nights before the pope revoked his excommunication of him. They really knew how to shame politicians back in the Middle Ages, and perhaps John Walsh kneeling on some Montana doorsteps as he makes the rounds might just allow him to keep that seat in Washington.
  

Well, those are a few ideas. I’m not sure John Walsh will want to take any of them up, but it’s good to get all the options out on the table.

This is going to be a dicey few days for John Walsh, and there’s a damn good chance he’ll resign. I’m not sure if we’ve had a senator resign since William A. Clark in 1900. The good news for Clark was that he was elected again in 1901 and served until 1907. I’m not sure John Walsh will be able to say the same.

What do you think?