How did I miss this?

If you thought Putin was totally unoriginal in following the great Russian power-consolidating tradition, check this out. Putin is a copy cat in more ways than one, according to the folks next door at Brookings:

Large chunks of Mr. Putin’s mid-1990s economics dissertation on planning in the natural resources sector were lifted straight out of a management text published by two University of Pittsburgh academics nearly 20 years earlier, Washington researchers insisted yesterday.

Six diagrams and tables from the 218-page dissertation mimic in form and content similar charts in the Russian translation of the Americans’ work as well, according to Brookings Institution senior fellow Clifford G. Gaddy. 

They say that he took a lot of text “word for word” from a 1978 management textbook written by William R. King and David I. Cleland. It’s kind of strange considering Putin is known to be really smart and he does marathon press conferences without notes.

Putin was pretty old when the he wrote this, so maybe he had a research assistant whose responsible. Cleland told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “The guy is not a dumb man, in fact he is very brilliant, maybe he was taken by someone who did it and didn’t tell him about it.”

Hat tip: AL Daily.