Last night, Joe the Plumber, the essence of un-Muckety, became the sweetheart of both political parties and the mainstream media.
As an icon of middle-class America, Joe was mentioned by the candidates 26 times in Wednesday’s presidential debate.
This morning, his driveway was jammed with TV cameras and reporters jostling for interviews.
“I’m pretty much average,” Joe - in real life Joe Wurzelbacher, a single father from Holland, Ohio - told a bevy of reporters outside his home.
And a few minutes later, “This isn’t national, is it?”
At a midday rally in Pennsylvania, Republican presidential candidate John McCain told the crowd that he thought he’d done well at the debate. “The real winner last night,” he added, “was Joe the Plumber!”
But celebrity has its downside. By midday, Joe the Plumber was admitting that he lacked a plumber’s license, and Politico was reporting that he hadn’t paid his taxes.
Further scrutiny by the press revealed that he had registered to vote under under the name Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher.
It all started last weekend, during a Barack Obama campaign stop in Ohio, when Wurzelbacher asked the candidate whether he believed in the American dream. Wurzelbacher said he was planning to buy a company that makes more than $250,000 a year, and he was concerned that his taxes would go up with the Obama tax plan.
Obama explained his plan in detail, saying it’s better to lower taxes for those who make less, so they can afford to become customers of small businesses such as Wurzelbacher’s.
“I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” Obama told Wurzelbacher then.
McCain retold the story last night, adding: “What you want to do to Joe the plumber and millions more like him is have their taxes increased and not be able to realize the American dream of owning their own business.” McCain characterized the plan as “class warfare.”
Obama’s answer: “What I essentially said to him was, ‘Five years ago, when you were in a position to buy your business, you needed a tax cut then.’ And what I want to do is to make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entrepreneur who doesn’t yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now.”
After the debate, Wurzelbacher wouldn’t say who he is voting for, but he criticized Obama’s plan.
“Redistributing the wealth, as far as my hard work, that upsets me,” he told CNN, one of the many media outlets clamoring for his time.
He later told Katie Couric that he confronted Obama because he believed other people were asking softball questions.
“I asked the question, but I still got a tap dance,” he said. “Almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr.”
Below, Wurzelbacher talks to the press after Thursday’s debate.
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3 Comments
#1. Carlos 10.16.2008
What about Joe six pack? I think he is feeling left out!
#2. Laurie Bennett 10.16.2008
To say nothing of Joe Biden, the ordinary Joe from Scranton.
#3. truthspeaker 10.16.2008
I’m getting tired of this Joe the Plumber distortion and its obvious that posters don’t understand business taxes. Business taxes are levied on net income not gross income. This means that Joe the Plumber would need to make > $250k after he’s paid all of his workers wages and his business expenses. So yeah if he’s going to take home > $250k a year then he can pay a little more in taxes.
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