Ironically enough, not long ago Senator Clinton made a major issue out of Senator Obama’s failure to credit an aide for words he used in a speech. Clinton also made a major issue out of Senator Obama’s recognition that former President Ronald Reagan had some good ideas. Now Clinton, who used one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite and often repeated jokes, is being chided by the former president’s biographer for failing to cite Reagan as the source for her material.

It reminds me of the story about that little boy, have you ever heard this story where you know, a man walks by the barn and sees this little boy in this room filled with manure,” she reiterates. “And he’s standing there and he’s digging, and he’s digging, and he’s digging. And the man says, ‘Son, what are you doing up to your hips in manure with that little shovel?’ The boys says, ‘Well, with this much manure around there’s got to be a pony — and I’m going to find it.’”

Ironically, the story Clinton recounted was made famous by former Republican President Ronald Reagan. And just a few months ago Clinton criticized her opponent, Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois), for saying Reagan “changed the trajectory of America in a way that … Bill Clinton did not.”

Reagan biographer Paul Kengor sarcastically states that he “did not know Clinton was such a Reagan fan.”

“Reagan told this story, constantly told this joke, constantly,” says Kengor. “In fact, any time that I did research on Reagan and the economy from 1981 to ‘83, no matter who I was talking to — Ed Meese, Bill Clark, you name it, whichever Reagan staffer — they would say, ‘You know what Reagan said, he would always tell this story at the time about the boy and the pile of manure.’ So for Hillary not to credit Ronald Reagan is itself a bunch of manure.”

According to Kengor, Clinton’s use of the story was the first time he has heard a public figure use the story since Ronald Reagan used it to bolster his optimism that tax cuts would spur economic growth in the midst of a recession. Interestingly, Kengor points out, Clinton applied the story to her mantra “there’s not a problem we can’t solve.”