Apparently, asking a question in a presidential election that gets mentioned on national television (as well as indulging in a chance at one’s fifteen minutes of fame) can lead to undue scrutiny:
His full name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. And he owes back taxes, too, public records show.
Turns out he isn’t licensed plumber (but he works in the plumbing business) and the business for which he works isn’t in the income range that would lead to the tax problems under Obama’s proposal (which is relevant insofar as that’s what started the whole discussion in the first place).
The situation is unfortunate because at the end of the day, all he did was ask a presidential candidate a question, and then became a prop in a presidential debate. Granted, it seems that after the fact he embraced the media attention, but it is unclear to me why it was necessary to report on his back taxes (where was the public interest in that revelation?). For that matter, I am not sure that his status as a licensed plumber is something we all needed to know.
Doesn’t this episode ultimately serve to dissuade normal citizens from participating, even in a small way, in the political system? Should it really be: ask a candidate a question and who knows, you’re financial embarrassments may become international news?
The issue of the business itself and whether it would be affected by the Obama tax plan, however, is fully fair game as it is a question that is of relevance to the public the informs us about an important policy proposal.
I will say, however, that the outrage of in some sectors of the right-o-sphere over the incident is rather hypocritical, since they targeted a citizen-prop used by the Democrats in the SCHIP debate (Graeme Frost). At the time, Michelle Malkin, who is today decrying “Operation Destroy Joe Plumber” and has graphic about “Joe Plumber Derangement Syndrome), wrote
A word for all the faux outraged leftists accusing conservative bloggers of waging a “smear campaign:” Asking questions and subjecting political anecdotes to scrutiny are what journalists should be doing.
Of course, today she is upset that the MSM only go after conservative-related anecdotes. I must confess, given the way that many went after a child and his family, including some speculation about the value and interior of their home and the children’s schooling,1 it is difficult to take Malkin’s outrage in this case as anything other than driven by partisan leanings.
How about this: how about reporters (or bloggers) look into the policy-related claims of these situations and not delve into personal information about people who are guilty of nothing other than being citizens who brush up against vast political forces against which they have little real protection. It is one thing to look into the private affairs of someone seeking the power of political office, it is yet another to dig into the private information of a citizen who simply asked a question or was willing to advocate for a specific policy outcome.
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October 17th, 2008 at 8:02 am
[...] PoliBlog (TM): A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » The Unfortunate Tale of Joe the Plumber [...]
October 17th, 2008 at 8:21 am
It’s that way with all religous zealots. Anything done now will be more than justified by the good that will come later, in this case the glory of an Obama presidency. The pattern for this is set at the top, telling backers to “get in the face” of their neighbors, sending threatening letters to TV stations that have the temerity to run ads that aren’t “fair”.
But I’m sure after the election they’ll disarm the intimidation machine and join hands for a good round of Kumbaya.
October 17th, 2008 at 8:27 am
[...] PoliBlog (TM): A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » The Unfortunate Tale of Joe the Plumber [...]
October 17th, 2008 at 9:04 am
This is a classic case of “shoot the messenger” instead of answer the criticism (would Obama’s tax plan raise taxes on “small businesses” — which can be defined as having fewer than 50 employees or making less than $1 million/year — thus leaving less money to hire people? The answer appears to be “of course, that’s the whole point).
Not too long ago we were told families are absolutely off limits. Strangley people less connected to politics are fair game.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:56 am
This is a classic case of “shoot the messenger” instead of answer the criticism (would Obama’s tax plan raise taxes on “small businesses” — which can be defined as having fewer than 50 employees or making less than $1 million/year — thus leaving less money to hire people? The answer appears to be “of course, that’s the whole point).
In fairness, the fact of the matter here was that Joe would not have been taxed under the plan, which was a legitimate journalistic issue as would any attempt to sort out what the plan would, or would not do.
In regards to the other elements of the story, I have made myself clear, I think, as to my distaste for it.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Pretty stupid to waste your last debate talking about a fraud. Do we even talk about Iraq or Afghanistan anymore?
Guess McCain forgot to “vette” Joe the Plumber.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:53 am
CNN presents an article asking readers if they are tired of the Presidential campaign. As if to say enough already. However, if Obama was behind in the polls right now, you can bet that biased Pro-Obama CNN would not insinuate that it’s time to call the campaigning to an end. Also, it’s Obama who is hammering the American public with 2 or 3 times as many television ads as Senator John McCain … not to mention Obama’shuge ground operation, and telephone banks invading the privacy of our homes, with endless telephone calls, which seem to interrupt our privacy right about dinner time.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I’ll concede that Joe himself won’t be paying higher taxes. But out of 300 million Americans, I have a hunch that at least some of them are business owners that will be hit with a tax hike, not because of their take home pay, but because of their business’s income — and much of that taxable income will remain invested in the business.
In my experience, small business owners are becoming slightly more liberal than they were a few years ago. If the answer to Joe’s hypothetical is “how dare you question the Great One you infidel!” I think he may lose a few votes.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Unfortunately it was John McCain that brought Joe out instead of talking to all of us. Especially since the Joe he was talking to is not the real Joe. So, it makes the point he was trying to bring up have no meaning and show that he never looks for the truth in anything any more.
October 17th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
“I’ll concede that Joe himself won’t be paying higher taxes. But out of 300 million Americans, I have a hunch that at least some of them are business owners that will be hit with a tax hike, not because of their take home pay, but because of their business’s income — and much of that taxable income will remain invested in the business.”
Then it’s sorta odd that the McCain campaign couldn’t come up with one.
October 17th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Barry, are you seriously suggesting that there are no small businesses in the US that (1) make more than $250,000/year, and (2) are sole proprietorships, partnerships or S Corporations?
It’s not like McCain went looking for Joe. In fact, The Great Obama — may he live forever — was canvassing Joe’s neighborhood, and it appears Joe decided to have some fun asking what amounts to a plausible hypothetical. The Mighty Obama — a law professor — gave an answer that implies he thinks such business owners do exist, and he thinks it’s a great idea to spread their wealth around.
Of course he’s also looking to spread Exxon’s wealth around, but last I heard, not GM’s wealth. And he famously doesn’t spread much of his personal wealth around to any charities, although he does have a record of spreading pork around and spreading his campaign wealth around to groups like Acorn.
When I was a bank teller, I remember a service station owner once mentioning that he had sold his service station. He never told me the amount the service station made each year, or how many employees he had, but I believe the current owner is likely looking at a tax hike as part of The Marvelous Obama’s “spread other people’s wealth around” initiative.
Taking money from small businesses leaves those small businesses — the backbone of the economy — with less resources for hiring or even handling cash flow issues. In the end, it makes it more likely that they will go bankrupt. It’s not a great idea when trying to avoid a recession.
October 17th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Neither John McCain nor Joe the Plumber went looking for Obama to ask him a question. It was Obama who knocked on Joe’s door. The question isn’t about Joe, it is about the answer that Obama gave and his comment about sharing the wealth. Liberals, with the help of the media, are good diverting issues.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I you ask me this whole Joe the Plumber circus stinks of a Karl Rove scheme. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was all contrived by Rove the Weasel and his right-wing crooks.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
An American citizen should be able to ask Obama
a question, without being crucified by the Obama campaign.
Obama is ahead in the polls, but are the polls
a realistic reflection of what will actually happen
in the voting booth? Obama is outspending McCain
3 to one … He has 90% of the media in his pocket
… he has 98% of the black vote … he has voter fraud
on his side, with groups like Acorn … and yet the
election is still close. So far, all the conclusions by all the
pundits are totally based upon POLLS. Not a single actual vote
has been cast yet. Obama supporters gush at how
well their man has done in the debates, which proves
once again that Obama is a good debater and a good
speaker. It doesn’t say anything about his character,
judgement, or what kind of a leader he would be.
I still would rather trust a man who would not sell out
his fellow prisoners, even during 5 years of torture,
than to trust a man who betrayed a 20 year friendship,
for personal ambition. And … regarding this election,
until people actually vote … it ain’t over till it’s over!
October 17th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Hmmm, well it seems to me that a wise voter participating in the campaign process would not try to pin down a candidate on his tax policy unless the voter’s own taxes were in order. And it does seem to me that, in a context in which one of the candidates is trying to exploit the voter to make a point on taxes, that the public interest is indeed served by knowing the full story of the voter’s position with respect to taxation.
Bringing a voter’s private situation into a public debate is regrettable, but I blame the candidate who brought it into the debate, and the voter himself, more than the media. One candidate chose to make the voter’s interaction with another candidate a public issue. It was already public, because of microphones present at the initial exchange, but it got raised several notches by being mentioned a couple dozen times in a nationally televised debate.
The whole thing rather trivializes the campaign, but consider the desperate source of the story’s insertion into the debate and it’s sadly not surprising.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
The whole thing rather trivializes the campaign,
Indeed.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Poor “Joe” with the help of Senator McCain brought all this attention upon himself. He was not all that honest when he posed the question. He probably has no chance in hell in buying the business as he claimed, and it appears unlikely that the business would even be worth as much as he claimed. Then he claimed to be an independent when he was in fact a registered republican. I think all this is relevant, because the republicans are so desperate that they jumped at the chance of making “Joe” a poster boy for their campaign. They made no effort to verify the facts. They are not interested in the truth when it is inconvenient.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Oh, cool. Now Obama thinks we should be prosecuted for reporting on voting fraud.
Change we can believe in.
October 17th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
The comment string to this post represent the whole issue on a small scale.
The question he asked was legitimate and relevant to a significant subset of the electorate. Whether he was a licensed plumber or an axe murderer on parole doesn’t change the validity of the question.
And I have to differ with you Dr. Taylor regarding your view on Graeme Frost. In the current case you have an individual standing in his own yard minding his own business who is approached by the candidate. In the Frost instance you have a minor child who was willingly put forward by his parents and the party to be a spokesperson for the Democratic position on SCHIP. Without defending Ms. Malkin’s writings, I think these represent substantially different situations.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
ts:
The Frost situation was, in fact, much worse, as much of what Malkin & Co. “reported” was based on speculation and hearsay, and ended up not to be true–it wasn’t as if they even did legitimate reporting on the family. Instead, they guessed and assumed the worse about the information that they thought they had.
October 18th, 2008 at 6:44 am
If the Frost situation is worse (and I’ll have to take your word on that), then it is worse in style rather than magnitude, since I had never heard of this Frost kid until reading the above post, but you’d think Joe the Plumber had moved into the spare bedroom of my house from the amount I hear about him.
Since Barack Obama showed up on Joe the Plumber’s doorstep, the lesson isn’t “stay out of politics, or the media will get you.” The lesson is “if someone shows up at your doorstep around Halloween, pray it’s a serial killer, not a politician.”
Seriously, this is a sign of how over-stage-managed political campaigns are. A candidate runs into a non-vetted citizen, the citizen asks a perfectly reasonable question, and it’s such an unusual thing that the entire news cycle has to revolve around this incident for days on end. My guess is that right now the Obama campaign is throwing hand-picked and thoroughly-vetted “average citizens” in McCain’s path in the hope of getting a reciprical situation going.
October 18th, 2008 at 10:42 am
It’s disheartening to see Joe the Plumber thrashed online, just as it was to see the Frost insanity. But in both cases, it was the politicians who used these them as poster-people for their own ends. And Dr. Taylor’s right about Malkin’s rank hypocrisy on this.
This odd slant that Joe’s media blitz comes from asking a question of “The One” is even more confounding. People ask questions of politicians all the time. Do we know their names and personal details? Of course not.
Has the online community crossed some lines? Ohmy yes. But John McCain set this man up by naming him again and again and again in the most public of national venues, without knowing anything about him. Even if the blogosphere was NOT the hyperbolic cesspool it is, Joe would have been looked at closely.
If McCain needed to personify the tax issue (a valid discussion point), then he should have taken the time to find a representative “Joe” that fit the narrative. I have absolutely no doubt that there are many.
October 19th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Relax everybody. After Obama spreads the wealth we’ll all have jobs. Just practice saying “Do you want fries with that?”
October 20th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Dave B. (Posting #23) is entirely right. When the “Messiah” gets his way we will all be slinging fries and burgers as he spreads the wealth. However none of his own wealth will be included. Just as the paltry $100 a year that his brother in Kenya earns is not supplemented by any of “that one’s” wealth.