The New Republic

Devil's advocate time.

Okay, so the guy's an unlicensed, nonunion plumber who lies about his income and owes back taxes. Guess what? He's also an American citizen who votes and who cares enough about the election to stick his neck out. For that, his head should not be chopped off.

It's not his fault that McCain has impulsively tried to piggyback off the guy's question (vetting somebody is, um, not McCain's top skill). His personal veracity notwithstanding, the plumber's essential question--what are the implications of Obama's wealth redistribution policies on a small businessman?--is still valid. "Joe" or "Samuel" or whoever he is apparently wasn't happy with Obama's answer. Neither am I (an Obama supporter).

Ad hominem attacks on some guy who fluffs his resume when a mic's thrust in his face don't negate the value of the guy's query. They are also disingenuous when coming from Obama's supporters, given that the latter have spent much of the election arguing (rightly, IMO) that McCain should drop the character assassinations and guilt by association attacks and stick to discussing relevant economic policy--e.g., the relative effects of the candidates' tax/spending policies on owners of small businesses.

- williamyard

October 16, 2008 at 3:16pm

Ach - leave the man alone.

- icarusr

October 16, 2008 at 3:30pm

Icarus, agreed about leaving him alone on verifying his resume. Unless he turns out to be a McCain plant, which looks unlikely.  I linked to the NY Times article Mr. Crowley provides.  The main point for me is the plumber's assertion that Obama tap dances around taxes.  This just shows a man, like so many of my fellow countrymen, who equate complexity and nuance with tap dancing.

A couple of weeks ago during lunch I was watching CNN.  They were saying how McCain's tax plan would add $5.1 trillion to the nat'l debt, Obama's $3.6 (not sure if they meant four or eight yrs.)  This wasn't policy proposal, but a sound bite.  A coworker came in and saw that segment, and said, "why can't they just talk straight to the people.  Why do they always have to go over our heads."  (Said co-worker is otherwise not the sharpest knife).   This is the level of political understanding many American have.

Agreed that plumber wasn't asking for his views to be aired, and encourages people to make up their own minds.

- satyendra

October 16, 2008 at 4:02pm

I thought the original discussion between Joe and Barack was an interesting man-on-the-street kind of thing that both handled well. It is unfortunate that, like too many things the media gets involved in, it has spun out of control to the extent people are delving into the guys background. I agree we should leave Joe alone.

- ndmackenzie

October 16, 2008 at 4:04pm

I thought Good Morning America asked him whether he had been contacted by either campaign. He only said McCain had offered for him to appear at a rally... which clearly seems to have been after the debate.

- primwallflow

October 16, 2008 at 4:07pm

What yard said.  All the guy did was ask Obama a question, and a legitimate one at that (even if it doesn't apply to Joe personally).  He didn't ask to be made into a symbol by the McCain campaign. Plus, I'm going to really go out on a limb and guess that the "J" stands for "Joseph." Lots of people go by their middle names and it doesn't make them frauds.  Did anyone ever say things like "Ross--I mean Henry R..--Perot"?

Now I happen to think that Joe's beliefs about taxes--basically that a progressive tax system is just meant to punish success--are misguided.  At a basic level, you tax the rich for the same reason that Jesse James robbed banks: that's where the money is.  And Obama is right about small businesses needing customers that can buy things.  The issue with huge income inequality is not that the rich are greedy bastards who should be punished but that having things so concentrated at the top is bad for the economy.

- AlanSP

October 16, 2008 at 4:15pm

Hey, the trashing of this guy is unfortunately a characteristic of him being picked up by the right and waved aroudn in our faces. You remember when SCHIP was getting voted on and that poor family from Baltimore I believe was used as a poster child FOR SCHIP and Malkin and her ilk ripped them new ones (although eventually it was all proven true, oh and there was no appology). I'm not defending the behavior, but 'the messenger counts' is the game here...

At least this is factual.

- dbhuff

October 16, 2008 at 4:41pm

AlanSP, right on. I completely agree. And as anyone who has watched the GINI ratio in this country climb to unprecedented heights, the flip side of income inequality is the break down of society. "redistribution" is code since the only tax system that doesn't redistribute is one that taxes everyone the same dollar amount, and that's clearly not workable. So what IS fair is assessing how much someone benefits from the societal management that government brings. For instance, does a factory owner benefit from a well-functioining education system that provides quality workers for his plant? yes, and generally to a greater degree than those workers benefit from the education themselves.

- dbhuff

October 16, 2008 at 4:45pm

Oh, and it turns out Joe the Plumber is related to Charles Keating...

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.../the-vetting-of.html

- dbhuff

October 16, 2008 at 4:48pm

I thought Joe Plumber was a just a generic persona, like that familiar brunette in a red blazer, Betty Crocker -- wait...

- thengling

October 16, 2008 at 5:03pm

... except it now appears the Keating connection is false:

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.../correction-1.html

- Jill Pinot Noir

October 16, 2008 at 5:22pm

Devil's advocate to all the devil's advocating going on here:  This guy was put forward as a poster child for McCain's policies -- relentlessly.  Looking into a poster child to see whether he actually fits the bill is standard operating procedure, and I see nothing wrong with it.

Yard, McCain's tax policies would redistribute wealth.  Every income tax we've ever had redistributes wealth, including the first one during the civil war, which had two brackets.  We redistributed wealth a shitload more than Obama's proposing under that pinko Dwight Eisenhower.  Reagan too.  The only tax policy that *doesn't* redistribute wealth is a flat tax.  I don't believe that anyone in serious contention for high office in this country has ever proposed that, and we've never had it.  (Forbes is the only one I'm aware of, and he wasn't in serious contention.)

So, let's stop pretending that making the tax code flatter (but not anywhere close to really flat) is somehow non-redistributive and ideologically pure, and that going a little bit in the other direction (where it was under Clinton) is socialism.  Sick and tired of it.

However, my guess is that there are a lot more Republicans out there who favor a flat tax and little to no social insurance -- that is the extreme end of the direction they always want to move in -- than there are Democrats who favor a Europe-like tax burden and very generous social insurance -- the extreme end of the direction Democrats want to go in.  The reason I suspect that is that today's Republican Party is more ideologically orthodox than the Democratic Party, and the purported unfairness of a progressive tax code is part of that ideology.  While using tax policy to relieve broad-based legitimate hardship and enhance economic security is certainly part of the Democrats' policy orientation (and *not* part of the GOP policy orientation), increasingly Democrats focus greater attention on the *quality* of government investments.  That's what you're really seeing with Obama's proposals.  The right says that government taxing and spending is basically automatically bad for the universe.  Democrats say, hold on, your view, taken to its logical extreme, is ludicrous and hurts too many people and, besides, there are many things government can do that the will enhance economic security while growing wealth, maintaining the country's competitiveness, and not infringe on anyone's economic liberty as we live it.

- jhildner

October 16, 2008 at 5:28pm

Er, it was Obama who entered Joe's neighborhood, not Joe seeking out Obama.  The ad hominem attack on him is indeed disgusting.  It is Obama's reply, not Joe's question, that raised all the eyebrows.  Therefore, that reply should be the basis of debate and discussion, as jhildner admirably follows through.

- nbarry

October 16, 2008 at 5:51pm

Sam was an obvious plant, which he was totally entitled to be - he believes in McCain's shtick (such that it is) and is entitled to.  

But you play you pay, and I'm sure Sam knows that.  You put yourself in front of a Mack truck (a hungry campaign press corp on deadline) and you'll probably get smacked, at minimum.  

BTW - Plumbers have a way to make 250K?  Glad to hear it.

Bummed I can't make it to DC tonight for the TNR event, my little one has 103 fever for the second day in a row - he's yelling at me pretty much every minute on the minute when he isn't sleeping, which is OK - but I can't go anywhere.  He needs me to be around to yell at and give him Tylenol.  

Please have another shindig TNR!  

- Wandreycer1

October 16, 2008 at 5:57pm

jhildner,

Don't misunderstand me: I much prefer Obama's wealth distribution (i.e., tax/spending) schemes to McCain's. I just didn't like HOW he answered the guy's question--too much hemming and hawing for my taste.

IMO Obama is calculating very carefully how much he can say. I like the direction he's taking: he seems, more and more, to be emphasizing the "We're all in this together...collective sacrifice" aspect of the solution to the "I have all the answers and everybody gets everything for free" aspect (which McCain is much closer to). Truth is a very hard sell. I've read that he has assembled a strong economics team and I'm glad he has because he's going to need them. If things get worse before they get better in an Obama Administration (not unlikely), plenty of voters will blame him. He needs to get them to buy in, shoulder part of the responsibility.

dbhuff wrote "...does a factory owner benefit from a well-functioning education system that provides quality workers for his plant? yes, and generally to a greater degree than those workers benefit from the education themselves." I agree. Obama needs to sell that to the small business owners. He hasn't, yet, IMO. (There's this little business of getting elected first, I admit.)

As to the guy's bona fides as an "independent" voter, Obama can't start parsing or accusing. Well, he CAN parse and accuse during the campaign, but my sense is that he's already looking ahead to being President and knows he's gonna need this guy or at least a lot of others like him to help drive a recovery. He does not need to piss this guy off. Best case scenario: he converts the guy. Difficult but not impossible.

So, baby steps, you know...

- williamyard

October 16, 2008 at 5:59pm

Er nbarry - Obama coming to a neighborhood is known in advance - he inserted himself which I totally support.  I liked Sam.  

But he lied about his name for effect to a campaign press corp and was busted for it, it was a silly thing to do.  He ruined his own credibility with that which set the dogs off.  You lie, you pay. Its that simple.

Look, I liked Sam and stand by his right to advocate for his beliefs, and I don't care at all that he has a tax lien (whatever that is, it sounds like something I'd be against) and no license -  wish I didn't know those things.  But he asked for it.

- Wandreycer1

October 16, 2008 at 6:06pm

Okay Yard, sorry to protest too much.  I didn't actually see Obama's answer to the guy -- I just heard that he said something along the lines of sharing the wealth that people were objecting to, so I thought you were objecting to that sentiment generally....

- jhildner

October 16, 2008 at 6:14pm

jhildner writes,

"This guy was put forward as a poster child for McCain's policies -- relentlessly.  Looking into a poster child to see whether he actually fits the bill is standard operating procedure, and I see nothing wrong with it."

It is indeed standard operating procedure, but that doesn't mean it's a good way to treat the people involved.  Personally, I think it's better to shoot the message than the messenger, especially when said messenger is a guy who had no idea he was going to become a poster child.  It's fine to scrutinize people who throw themselves into the public eye, because they've made the decision to put themselves under the spotlight.  It's a different story when somebody gets shoved into the spotlight.by someone else.

Would McCan's argument have any more merit if he'd found a better example?(I'm sure some people out there with suitably similar stories whose taxes actually would increase, but the argument would be just as bad if Joe actually was pulling in over $250,000, for the reasons I pointed out above.

I'm sort of going off on a tangent, but you hit on an interesting point about taxing and spending.  It's one of the interesting questions that comes up in arguments I sometimes have with fiscally conservative friends and family members.  What is wrong with government spending?  There are a few who object to it on principle, on the moral ground that the government has no right to take people's money and spend it on other people.  But more commonly, the objection is that the government is inefficient and wastes large amounts of money that the private sector would put to better use.  Which is to say that people don't object to government spending their money so much as they object to government spending their money *badly*.

This distinction is almost entirely lost in conservative talk about spending.  All spending on things other than the military is judged a priori to be wasteful.  It would have been nice to see Obama explicitly make the point that it's not "wasteful" to make sure that everyone has health care, or to invest in alternative energy, or education.  Those things are worthwhile investments (and I do give him credit for describing them as such).

- AlanSP

October 16, 2008 at 6:27pm

I don't want to pile on Joe.  He seems like a nice enough guy and I don't envy the storm he's been drawn into.  But this is exactly the sort of cognitive dissonance that just fascinates me.  Here's a guy who is voting completely against his own economic interest and seems to need to justify it by creating this entirely hypothetical world where he is making $280k a year and being crushed under the weight of the extra $900 in taxes he would pay under the Obama tax plan.

Joe, I don't want to crush your dreams, brother, but lets work on keeping you out of prison first.  Let's get those back taxes squared away, and then we can look at ways to buy that business.  Right now, the marginal rate above $250k is the least of your worries.

Obviously he is motivated for other reasons to support McCain and I'm not going to question his motivation.  But let's keep it real on the economics.  Best of luck to you, Joe, and don't let anyone make you into a tool.

- sgraser

October 16, 2008 at 6:30pm

I'll be honest:  I was eating up all the juicy details about Sam the Not-a-Plumber today, and then you guys all killed my buzz with your "poor fella" routine.  I've had to rethink.

Let's see if I can figure out why this whole thing is aggravating.  Can I call him Joe, as Palin would say?  Why not?  Joe does not make $250,000.  He will not make $250,000 in the future.  I don't make anywhere near $250,000 and I'm a card-carrying elitist yuppie snob.  Joe makes *$40,000* a year.  He has no plans to buy the business he works for.  Does that business make $250,000?  Not even close.  It makes closer to $100,000.  And even if Joe's business he won't acuiqre did make $250,000 in receipts (as distinct from taxable income to Joe) -- the premise of Joe's question -- he would see a tax cut under Obama's plan.  Joe is nowhere near real money.  Neither am I.  Neither is the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Joe is being used to establish a myth -- that of the American who is both your average Joe, right down to the name, and also wealthy enough to be hit (just a little) by Obama's tax plan.

THERE ARE NO SUCH PEOPLE.

When McCain attempts to produce such a person, it is relevant that he's miles from qualifying.  The folks who will see their taxes go up (to Clinton levels) under Obama's plan do not fit Joe's profile.  They are not, by definition, working class.  They don't live in modest homes.  They are not your average Joes who make for good political theater, who are legitimately worried about making ends meet.

THERE ARE NO SUCH PEOPLE.  JOE THE PLUMBER DOESN'T EXIST.

Sam J. Wurzelbacher exists.  Sam J. Wurzelbacher is working class.  Joe the Plumber, as McCain kept saying last night, is rich.  ("Good news," indeed.)  I think that's worth pointing out.  If Joe is bothered by his 15 minutes -- and I have no reason to assume that he is -- he can blame McCain for turning him into Joe the Plumber.

Now, somebody said tonight that Joe made some appearances on right-wing talk radio, even before the debate.  He's not media shy.  His fantasy business just happened to make $250-280K per year, just the right amount (he thought wrongly, as it applies to gross business receipts), to take a hit under Obama's plan.  I can't be sure that he's not somebody's plant.

All of this strikes me as clearly fair game.  I certainly wouldn't advise the campaign to dwell on Joe personally, but the media can take a look at yet another one of McCain's stunts to see if it makes any sense whatsoever.  Not surprisingly, it doesn't.

- jhildner

October 16, 2008 at 9:07pm

I don't feel sorry for him.

If you want to enter the "thinking and talking" ring, your arguments get subjected to the same scrutiny as everyone else's, or they should be, ideally. Anything less is patronizing.

- psantillana

October 16, 2008 at 9:12pm

pssantillana,

Nobody's saying his *arguments* are off-limits.  I just think harping on things like the fact that he goes by hiis middle name is petty

- AlanSP

October 16, 2008 at 10:30pm

Alan SP, agreed that the middle name is trivial and I'm surprised that some commenters here have apparently not previously encountered this common practice.

- satyendra

October 16, 2008 at 10:49pm

Jhildner, thanks for saying so eloquently what's been tugging at me subliminally all day, which is that if Joe the Plumber didn't exist, McCain would have to make him up.  And he did.

I'll have to modify my 1st comment to say that I don't want to scrutinize Sam's resume, but do want to scrutinize McCain's transmogrification of it into "Joe the Plumber."

- satyendra

October 16, 2008 at 11:48pm

The only thing I'll say is, what is the deal with the "lied about his name for effect" angle?  Is there something wrong with going by your middle name?

Woodrow Wilson was actually Thomas W. Wilson, incidentally.  Sneaky devil.

- ryanburke

October 17, 2008 at 12:15am

Joe is oddly comfortable with a horde of reporters surrounding him. Is this a result of Reality TV, where everyone expects to be on TV at some point, it's no big deal, or is this guy just mellow, open-faced guy with nothing to hide? I'd like to see a longer interview him.

The fact that he doesn't fit the stereotype is no surprise, nobody does. I know extreme fundamentalists who love Vegas, Obama supporters who are bigots, lesbians who are crazy for Bush (sorry), and so on. When both campaigns start talking about Joe SixPack and Joe the Plumber I cringe. So frickin' stupid.

Change of subject:

The Vatican dinner last night. Both guys are pretty funny. I'm sure Biden is funny, no doubt the Clintons are. Is Palin funny? Love to know if anyone knows.  

- fougasseu

October 17, 2008 at 3:58am

Ryan - Joe is the universal American shorthand for regular, blue collar guy,  find me a campaign or a conversation about politics in this country that doesn't eventually revolve almost entirely around our mythical Joe Six Pack.

That's comon knowledge. It seems pretty clear to me that he gave his middle name to gain more credibility, to be representative of the everyman - I mean it's not like Sam is a mouthful.  

He also lied about this business and how much it would make - 100K, 250K, its all lost in the plumbing I guess - 150K is taking quite a bit of license to make a point, and its just coincidentally Obama's cut off point for who will be taxed?  Um, Sam/Joe was pushing it to the point of being dishonest - a political fish tale.

Which is fine. Like I said, I liked him. But he did choose to lie for effect and was busted.  By today he'll be old news anyway.  It was probably worth it.  Go Sam go.

- Wandreycer1

October 17, 2008 at 5:36am

Simple way to see if he goes by Joe, ask people who live around him, if he has always been Joe then no big deal, if he was always Sam prior to this he would classify as a plant.

- gregstolhand

October 17, 2008 at 7:33am

One other thing that's bothering me about Joe the Plumber.  It's been stated that we don't know if the $280K figure he gave for the plumbing business is gross revenue or income.  If the former, his bus. would clearly qualify for a tax cut.  Is Joe just being cagey about the finances, or does he really not know them? If you don't understand the difference between taxation net income vs. gross receipts, you lack the basic fiscal skills to own a business, regardless of anyone's tax policy.

- satyendra

October 17, 2008 at 10:31am

jhildner's final post on this thread is also, I think, the final word, but I'll add a few more in support.

Joe the Plumber is as fictional as the Wizard of Oz.

Samuel the Single Father--known, perhaps, as Joe--turned out to be a man behind a curtain, and he should be left alone once the curtain is fully drawn and McCain's wizardry is exposed for the illusionist's trick--delusionist's trick--that it was.

- Nippers

October 17, 2008 at 10:54am

I think we're supposed to be talking about Joe's (or Sam's) gross annual income from his plumbing business, and assuming he has 3 or 4 employee plumbers, it's certainly not hard to imagine a gross income of $250K, considering what plumbers charge these days. Joe or Sam has been a salaried plumber up to now and probably lucky to be making $40K, but if he buys the business the income is on a different level, and it is the business income that will be taxed, not Joe/Sam's personal share of it. Am I missing something?

- jblum8156

October 17, 2008 at 1:41pm

See satyendra's brief post above for a useful comment on business net income vs gross receipts.

- ironyroad

October 17, 2008 at 2:13pm

Ok, I'm going to pile on a little bit.

The guy can't put together 1200 bucks to get the IRS off his back.  Chances are he isn't well positioned to buy and operate a business.  I'll bet he's been "getting ready to buy a business" for the past ten years.  And I'll bet everyone of his buddies is sick of hearing him talk about it.

I still love ya, Joe.  Just speaking the truth.  And you know what else?  There are probably neighborhoods where that's a million dollar home.

- sgraser

October 17, 2008 at 7:59pm

A lot of you guys here are REALLY nasty and certainly repressive no matter how liberal you think you are. I am talking about posters like Nippers, WandreyCer1, jhildner.

Haven't you hear d people whose first name is not used? I know several, including myself. I have three first names in the passport aside from the family name. English a pretty poor language (at least for me) for this

explanation, but anyway: in the passport I have a first name, then two middle names, then the last -or family- name. Guess what? I have always used the first of the middle names, NOT the first name. It has been like that since I was a kid. My parents gave me three names and I chose to use one of these. It so happens it's the middle in the passport.

Yet I would strongly resent if someone started calling me by the first name in the passport. I stromgly resented when they did that in the army - which tells you Nippers, jhildner and WandreyCer1 in which company you are.

It's MY choice, OK? Same goes for this guy Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. I don't like him, but he certainly has the right to go by Joe, not Sam. It's HIS name, guys! HE decides whether he calls himself. NOT YOU, not anybody else. Who the fuck gives you the right to decide what his real name is? He has both. He DOES has a right to choose - you DON'T.

- sleepyavl

October 17, 2008 at 9:02pm

All in all, I agree with sleepy on this one.  The guy has the right to call himself what he wants, without every aspect of his identity being parsed.  Equally, he has the right to have a shaved head without the assumption being made that he's a fascist thug.  What he *doesn't* have the right to, is to make assertions in public on a matter of public concern and then get a free pass.  If what he claims makes no logical sense, then journalists and us and anyone interested has the right to say so, and prove it if possible.

- ironyroad

October 17, 2008 at 9:54pm

sleepy:  Speaking for myself, I didn't dwell on his name.  I have no beef with Joe.  My beef is with the McCain campaign for making up a character, "Joe the Plumber" -- an average Joe and a also, somehow, a rich guy who would be hit a little under Obama's tax plan.  As I explained before, Joe the Plumber is not a real person -- there are no such people.  The facts turn out to confirm that in this case.

- jhildner

October 18, 2008 at 1:12am

jblum: "I think we're supposed to be talking about Joe's (or Sam's) gross annual income from his plumbing business, and assuming he has 3 or 4 employee plumbers, it's certainly not hard to imagine a gross income of $250K, considering what plumbers charge these days."

No, no, no.  Let's get something clear.  To continue the caps motif:

EMPLOYEE WAGES ARE *NOT* TAXABLE INCOME FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

They are what we call "deductible" because they constitute a "business expense."  We are most certainly *not* supposed to be talking about "gross annual income from his plumbing business," as much as McCain, Rush Limbaugh, or Joe might want to.  We should be talking about Joe's *taxable* income, because that's what's taxed.  It doesn't matter how many employees Joe's business might have.  (As it turns out, it would have two.)  Joe, even as a small business owner, pays taxes on *Joe's* taxable income, and not on his business's gross receipts.

There's no way around it:

FOR JOE TO SEE HIS TAXES GO UP UNDER OBAMA'S PLAN, HE, PERSONALLY, WOULD HAVE TO BE WEALTHY

Also, even if you're a small business owner lucky enough to have *taxable* income high enough to get a small hit under Obama's plan, it would not be as big as McCain says.  He says that you would pay the higher rate on *all* of your business income, when in fact you would only pay the higher rate on the income *above* the $250K cutoff.

Joe doesn't make a lot of money.  Even if he were to one day become a small business owner -- and I hope he does -- he *still* wouldn't make a lot of money.  Like Americans generally, small business owners *don't make a lot of money.*  *Very* few of those declaring business income make a quarter of a million dollars in taxable income -- maybe two percent.  What about them?  Well, they're rich.  Yes they are.  Good for them.  Trouble for McCain is, *they* don't make good props in an election season, so he's got to gin up this Joe the Plumber nonsense.

- jhildner

October 18, 2008 at 1:57am