POLITICS-US: Plumbing the Depths of Spin

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Analysis by Peter Costantini

LOS ANGELES, Oct 27 (IPS) – In the waning days of an interminable United States presidential campaign, a plumber and would-be small businessman bestrides the narrow race like a colossus with a tool belt.

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher was wrenched into the limelight on Oct. 15 during the third presidential debate by Senator John McCain, who dubbed him ”Joe the Plumber”. McCain repeatedly touted him as an exemplar of the hard-working, plain-spoken Middle American who would be helped by his tax plan — but hurt by Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s.

Morphing overnight from ordinary Joe into American idol, Wurzelbacher has galvanised the Republican presidential campaign of McCain and Governor Sarah Palin. The idea of the working-class hero as Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2012 would strain credibility only slightly more than Palin did this year.

In the contested state of Florida, McCain embarked on what he branded his ”Joe the Plumber” bus tour to take his message directly to voters. In his own media appearances, though, Wurzelbacher has become an avatar for some right-libertarian views too controversial for McCain.

As the Facebook page of Joe the Plumber’s life is mashed up, his abrupt apotheosis looks increasingly like old-fashioned political myth-making based on economic fuzzy logic.

The saga began on Oct. 12 in Toledo, Ohio, where Obama was campaigning.

Wurzelbacher asked the candidate whether his proposed income tax increase for families earning over 250,000 dollars a year would raise his taxes and prevent him from ”fulfilling the American dream” by buying the small plumbing company he works for. He said the firm makes 250,000 to 280,000 dollars a year.

Obama responded that people need a tax break while they are still working towards achieving their dream, rather than after they have achieved it. His proposal, he said, would keep the current rates on income below 250,000 dollars, but would raise the rate on income above that level from the current 36 percent to 39 percent.

In a mutually respectful six-minute exchange, Obama told Wurzelbacher: ”I don’t mind paying just a little bit more than the waitress that I just met [who] can barely make the rent…If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

During the debate, McCain argued that Joe the Plumber would pay higher taxes under Obama’s plan, which would cause him to be unable to employ people. Joe was trying to realise the American Dream, McCain said, and he would keep Joe’s taxes low.

Obama retorted that his plan would cut taxes for the ”95 percent of working Americans” who make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year. He said independent studies confirm that his plan would provide three times the amount of tax relief to working families that McCain’s would.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics, the average income of Ohio plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters in May 2007 was 47,930 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that figure has fallen slightly since 2000.

An analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a public-interest group, found that only the wealthiest 2.5 percent of taxpayers would see increased tax rates under Obama’s plan.

Instant celebrity has drained the details of Wurzelbacher’s life into the turbulent national debate.

According to media accounts, the 34-year-old single father of a 13-year-old boy works in Toledo, a small industrial city. Ohio is another battleground state in which Obama holds a small lead in recent polls.

Wurzelbacher told MSNBC that he had been employed for six years by Newell Plumbing & Heating. He reportedly does not have a plumber’s license and is not a member of the plumber’s union.

He said he had discussed taking over the firm at some point from the owner, Al Newell, but so far he didn’t have a good plan for how he would make the purchase.

A local plumbers’ union official told the Los Angeles Times that Newell runs the two-person firm, which does mainly residential plumbing, out of his garage. The official doubted that the firm could generate as much as 250,000 dollars a year.

Dun & Bradstreet pegged Newell’s annual sales at 510,000 dollars. This makes it unlikely that the firm could produce taxable income of more than 200,000 dollars, the single-taxpayer threshold for Obama’s increased rate, according to Bloomberg.com.

”If there’s a plumber or pipefitter making more than 250,000 dollars, we want to know where he’s working,” another union spokesman responded to the Christian Science Monitor. We don’t make that kind of money.”

Newell did not respond to repeated requests for comment from IPS.

Wurzelbacher acknowledged to reporters that at his current income level he would benefit from Obama’s tax cuts, but felt that they would still hurt others. He said he hoped that some day he would make 250,000 dollars.

For now, though, his financial picture is slightly cloudy: the state of Ohio has placed a lien of 1,182 dollars on his property for personal income taxes owed, according to the L.A. Times.

The plumber told MSNBC that he had voted in the Republican primary and backed McCain.

Rick Gorka, a McCain spokesman, told IPS that Joe the Plumber was proving to be ”a winning issue” for the campaign.

”Obama wants to punish small business and redistribute the wealth,” he said. Joe the Plumber highlights Obama’s radical plans for tax policy, and has become ”a nice synopsis of what we all believe.”

Gorka charged that Obama pulled the magic number of 250,000 dollars out of the air as the low limit of his tax increase, and that it could easily drop to 120,000 dollars.

Obama is ”channeling Herbert Hoover’s policies” of higher taxes and shutting down the borders to trade, he asserted, and would become ”one of the most protectionist presidents” in history.

In central Florida, the Miami Herald reported, McCain kicked off his ”Joe the Plumber” bus tour by blasting Obama’s comment that he wants to ”spread the wealth”.

”He’s more interested in determining who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie,” McCain said.

At his own Florida rally, Obama said that McCain has decided to ”just fabricate this notion that I’ve been attacking Joe the Plumber. I got nothing but love for Joe the Plumber; that’s why I want to give him a tax cut.”

”Everyone here wants some pie — we want to grow the pie, and then we want a slice of the pie,” the Democrat intoned. In response, the crowd chanted: ”We want pie!”

Since the debate, two polls have shown McCain improving his position slightly in Florida’s virtual dead heat. It is not clear, though, whether the Joe the Plumber strategy is a significant cause.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, at a Democratic economic forum, said he met an ironworker named Sean in Wurzelbacher’s neighbourhood, who asked him tell Obama that ”Sean the Ironworker is building a bridge for him to the White House.”

For his part, Wurzelbacher told Fox News that Obama expressed a ”kind of socialist viewpoint”.

”It’s my discretion who I want give my money to,” he objected. ”It’s not the government to decide that I make a little too much and so I need to share it with other people. That’s not the American dream.”

Wurzelbacher also said he likes the idea of a flat tax, and favours abolishing Social Security, the public retirement-insurance programme. Gorka said the McCain campaign does not agree with Wurzelbacher on these two issues.