Plumb ugly

Working over Joe

Date published: 10/22/2008

TITTERS, snickers, snorts, and guffaws--these are the sound effects, like the music chips inside greeting cards, accompanying media reports that the irreverent Joe the Plumber lacks a plumber's license, owes back taxes, and wasn't, according to his wife's divorce lawyer, Prince Charming. So now that America knows that Joe--Wurzelbacher by birth--is a versatile sinner, America can forget his brief but biting interrogation of Barack Obama. Witness impeached. Testimony stricken. Evidence dismissed.

But wait. Think back to Oct. 11, 2008, in those ancient mists before the big story about Mr. Wurzelbacher became his manifold shortcomings, when the blue-collar Ohioan first came to public light. Then, Mr. Obama plucked him out of his front yard, where he was tossing a football with his son, to do a heart-to-heart for the TV cameras--a mistake.

Surprisingly, given that John McCain had hardly laid a glove on the Illinois senator in two debates, Mr. Wurzelbacher drew blood: He assailed the Obama plan to raise taxes on people making over $250,000 per year because, he said, that might foul up his plans to buy a plumbing firm doing 250 G's in business. Four days later, during the third debate, Mr. McCain evoked Joe the Plumber to symbolize Mr. Obama's threat to the American Dream.

Now, the point of the Ohio exchange is not Mr. Wurzelbacher's personal history--although it turns out he needs no plumbing license because his boss is certified; a court clerk says Mr. Wurzelbacher likely knew nothing of Ohio's under-$2,000 tax lien against him; and aspirant grass widows have been rumored on very rare occasion to exaggerate their spouse's iniquities to a judge. Nor is Mr. Obama's planned extra juicing of quarter-millionaires the main item: Congresses do fiddle with marginal tax rates now and again--although hiking rates on entrepreneurs during a recession and expecting economic recovery is like immersing a napalm victim in a hot tub and expecting coos of ecstasy.

More significant than what Mr. Wurzelbacher said was Mr. Obama's response: "I think that when we spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." Redistributing property is a mandate hard to discover in America's founding documents, and we'll let it go at that.

And of comparable import is the unseemly enthusiasm of some media to comb through the written and oral history of a private citizen who stands up, by invitation, to express his views on quintessentially public matters. A noted Democrat once decried "the politics of personal destruction." Those politics have now colonized much of the media, and America notices. Snicker-snicker, haw-haw. Joe the Plumber is apt to weather this muckfest a lot better than Joe the Journalist.

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Date published: 10/22/2008

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