/ 17 October 2008

McCain, Obama and the plumber who is a US sensation

It came so close to being remembered as the hockey mom election. But, doggone it, hockey moms will just have to wait another four years. The 2008 US presidential election belongs to just one man: Joe the Plumber.

On Saturday Joe Wurzelbacher was, well, an ordinary Joe. Or to use a Sarah Palinism, a Joe Six Pack.

On Thursday he woke to find himself transformed into an international phenomenon.

By mentioning him more than 13 times in the first 10 minutes of Wednesday night’s third and final presidential debate, the Republican candidate, John McCain, sent Wurzelbacher into a media stratosphere the likes of which most publicity-starved brands can only dream of. Groups sprang up on Facebook with names like Joe the Plumber for President and Fans of Joe the Plumber.

He rose to number seven on Google’s list of most popular search expressions. T-shirts were rush-printed overnight, showing his bald, burly head above the logo: ”Hi, I’m Joe Plumber and Obama is a punk.”

Joe Francis, a plumber who mends pipes in Amarillo, Texas, 1 600km from Wurzelbacher’s home, received more than 600 phone calls from people expressing interest in his website, Joetheplumber.com. One man offered him $350 000 to buy the domain name. ”He sounded pretty serious,” an employee told the Guardian.

The maelstrom began only a few minutes into the televised debate at Hofstra University, on Long Island, on Wednesday night, when McCain seized on an impromptu encounter between Obama and a resident in Holland, Ohio, last weekend. ”His name is Joe Wurzelburger,” McCain said, getting his Wurzelbachers in a twist.

Joe was a man who was trying to realise the American dream, McCain went on, working 10, 12 hours a day to build up his business. He was planning to buy up another small business, but realised that under Obama’s tax plans he would be penalised for earning more than $250 000 a year.

”Joe, I want to tell ya,” McCain said, staring straight to camera and slipping into the good ol’ cowboy dialect that American politicians adopt when they talk directly to voters, even though they are multimillionaires from elite naval backgrounds. ”I’ll keep your taxes low.”

Later in the debate, McCain accused Obama through his tax proposals of waging ”class warfare”. Which was clever, because it distracted from the fact that in evoking the archetype of Joe the Plumber, McCain was himself declaring class warfare against Obama.

It is the way with such things that this whole escapade only came about by luck. Obama, taking a swing through the hugely significant swing state of Ohio at the weekend, just happened to stroll down Shrewsbury Street, in Holland, when Wurzelbacher was outside his house.

”Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” he asked the senator for Illinois.

Obama told him: ”It’s not that I want to punish your success. I think if you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

This is the YouTube election, so naturally the exchange was video recorded and was up for anyone to see within a matter of hours. Rightwing bloggers started linking to it, and from there it was just a small step on to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show and Rupert
Murdoch’s Fox News channel — presenting the ailing McCain campaign with a gift for the final debate.

The trajectory of the story is clear. But as one blogger put it, ”Who the devil is Joe the Plumber?”

Wurzelbacher (34) describes himself as having 15 years’ experience in the trade. He was, he says, raised by a poor single mother. ”I don’t have any bells and whistles. My trucks are a couple of years old and I’m going to have them for the next 10 years, probably,” he told the Toledo Base newspaper. But that leaves unexplained questions.

The plumbers’ union covering his area, Local 50, pointed out that he was not a member and had no licence to operate. ”We checked with his neighbours and they say they have never seen a service truck in his driveway,” said the union’s business manager, Thomas Joseph.

Wurzelbacher said the lack of paperwork had a simple explanation: he works for a small plumbing company on residential properties, so has no need for a licence of his own. Which in turn raises the question, how can a relatively lowly employee of a tiny plumbing company contemplate buying up a concern with the prospect of turning over more than $250 000 a year?

This one, it is safe to say, will run and run. In the meantime, Wurzelbacher is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame, telling anyone who will listen — and there are plenty of them — his views on America (”the greatest country on Earth”), Obama’s policies (”one more step towards socialism”) and the Iraq war (”what we’ve done over there is incredible”).

So far, he has not revealed which way he is going to vote. But one thing we do know is that his dislike of handing money to the government is genuine. Last year he had an order placed on him for failure to pay $1 182,92 in back-taxes. – guardian.co.uk