President Barack Obama released a new video Monday morning, announcing his plans to seek re-election in 2012. But some backers of Mitt Romney are already arguing the campaign’s new slogan, “It Begins With Us”, was copied from a Mitt Romney line from 2008, “Change Begins With Us.”
Here’s the new Obama video.
Now check out an early 2008 ad from Romney:
Clearly, the videos are very different (Romney’s ad features him, while Obama does not appear in his ad), but the question here is regarding the slogans.
Let’s be honest — politicians “borrow” ideas from each other all the time. There’s nothing new under the sun. And it certainly isn’t clear that Obama “stole” this idea from Romney — it very well could be that both teams had the same idea.
Having said that, Obama has a history of blatantly borrowing from other politicians. In 2008, the Hillary Clinton campaign accused Obama of plagiarizing a Gov. Deval Patrick (Massachusetts) speech. More recently, the theme of his 2011 State of The Union was “Winning The Future,” a slogan which had previously been the title of a Newt Gingrich book.