If you read Atrios (I’m guessing you do), you saw this this morning

Conservative White House employee seems to have gone to the Ben Domenech school of writing.

Do what now?

I’ve had a lot of fun at Tim Goeglein’s expense over the last few months. Mean-spirited fun, certainly, but my problem with him has always been one of personal taste. In his columns for The News-Sentinel, my old newspaper, he personifies a certain sort of apple-cheeked Hoosier drippiness, which undoubtedly masks a core of white-hot ambition. I mean, he worked at the right hand of Karl Rove, and remains in the White House. But while he works in the West Wing, he chooses to write awful, turgid essays on the wonders of Hoagy Carmichael, deceased operatic composers and his parents’ marriage. I know it’s unfair to expect policy analyses, but it’s maddening to think that here’s this guy, a home-towner, eyewitness to an epochal period in American history, and he gives us Odes to Summer. Why he chooses to do so for the failing paper in a two-newspaper town, one with a circulation that probably barely nudges 30,000 these days, remains a mystery. (I’ve heard theories: He does it for his mother, and He plans to run for office soon, and he’s raising his local profile. Don’t really care, anyway. He’s just fun to make fun of.

When William F. Buckley died this week, one of my first thoughts was that he’d been friends with Tim, and we would almost certainly have a long, overwrought, superlative-packed column coming down the pike soon, and we’d have ourselves a good time giggling over it. When I saw he had a piece in the paper Thursday, the day after Buckley died, I thought for a second the wait was over, then spotted the headline — Education: Ideas worth defending, honesty of reflective thought — and realized, no, this has been in the pipeline for a while.

Not that it was a total disappointment. I started to read, and a name jumped out at me — “Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey,” described as a “notable professor of philosophy at Dartmouth.” Now, I’m sure Tim’s spare brain space isn’t cluttered, as mine is, with “American Idol,” the internet and what’s-for-dinner concerns. Certainly string quartets waft through his paneled study, where he reads and thinks under the mounted ibex head, far from the vulgar buzz of pop culture. Surely he can acquaint himself with notable professors of philosophy at Dartmouth while I watch the Oscars. But this name was so goofy, just for the hell of it, I Googled it. And look what I found.

What she found was that he lifted his writing off of someone else.

So who is Mr. Goeglein?

Tim Goeglein’s self-described White House mission is one that would certainly delight the Barry Goldwaters of the world: catering to the purveyors of modern "American conservatism."

Starting most days at 6 a.m. and often lasting well into the night, Goeglein, a special assistant to President Bush, operates as a virtual middleman between the White House and conservatives of all stripes seeking to shape its policies. "[I] make sure they have a reliable access point, which is me," Goeglein said.

Officially, Goeglein, a 40-year-old who looks as if he would be carded trying to buy a beer, is deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison, one of four White House political departments run by uberstrategist Karl Rove. Yet Goeglein’s role is much more central to how this president operates — and wins elections — than the job title suggests, according to several Republicans outside and inside the White House.

It is Goeglein’s job to make sure conservatives are happy, in the loop and getting their best ideas before the president and turned into laws. With Goeglein’s assistance, Christian conservatives, for instance, were successful in lobbying Bush to push for abstinence-first funding to combat AIDs and speak out against the persecution of Christians in Sudan, according to Charles W. Colson, an evangelical Christian who works closely with Bush and Goeglein.

Goeglein was also Gary Bauer’s campaign manager.

Which leads you back to Nancy Nall. (Note: I heart Nancy Nall. I found her through Roy, who as anyone who’s been paying attention knows I heart, and she writes about the beleaguered husband’s native Detroit – if you were wondering what the hell is going on with the mayor, head over).

Anyway, here, Tim Goeglein gets busted again

Picking up on Atrios’ post about plagiarism, I spend the requisite 5 minutes on Google and find another example:

JONATHAN YARDLEY
September 3, 2007
Washington Post

Though most others — Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter — wrote primarily for the Broadway stage, Carmichael wrote only one musical and it was a flop.

Timothy Goeglein
The News-Sentinel
Nov. 05, 2007

Though most others – Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter (a fellow Hoosier, from Peru) – wrote primarily for the Broadway stage, Carmichael wrote only one musical, and it was a resounding flop.

JONATHAN YARDLEY
September 3, 2007
Washington Post

He was influenced by Irving Berlin and Louis Armstrong, he venerated Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, yet his own music was sui generis.

Timothy Goeglein
The News-Sentinel
Nov. 05, 2007

He was deeply influenced by Irving Berlin and Louis Armstrong; he venerated Duke Ellington and George Gershwin; yet his own music was sui generis.

And I say to myself it’s a wonderful world.

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