A Leaky Argument

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 17, 2008 9:40 AM

Surely I've got better things to do than to flush this column down the drain by yammering on about Joe the Plumber.

Actually, not at the moment.

The media simply swooned over Joe Wurzelbacher, regular guy from Ohio. Hard-working heartlander. Antithesis of a Wall Street shark or Washington lobbyist. John McCain kept mentioning him, and then Barack Obama kept mentioning him, and the next thing you know he's on with Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer.

I did find something odd about Joe-mania. Usually politicians find ordinary folks who perfectly symbolize the point they want to make. Joe told Obama at a rally that he objects to the Democrat's tax plan. But Joe's taxes wouldn't go up under Obama's plan, because he doesn't make anything close to 250K a year. (In fact, he took in $40,000 two years ago.) Joe doesn't want a hike in case he someday moves up the income ladder. But for McCain, that was close enough.

Joe was feeling the hot breath of the MSM on his neck for 12 hours or so. But soon it didn't smell so sweet.

The Toledo Blade: " 'Joe the Plumber' isn't a plumber -- at least not a licensed one, or a registered one."

And Politico: "Joe the Plumber really is no fan of paying taxes. According to records from the Lucas County (OH) Court of Common Pleas found by my colleague Avi Zenilman, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher has a lien placed against him to the tune of $1,182.92."

Ah -- his first name isn't even Joe. So much for Joe-mentum.

The plumber guy "suddenly found himself facing celebrity-level scrutiny" ( New York Times). He "conducted a string of media interviews while becoming the subject of Web speculation about his motives" ( Los Angeles Times). "Joe the plumber's 15 minutes of fame took a sour turn" ( Boston Globe). "Joe the plumber's story has some cracks" ( Chicago Tribune). "Unlicensed? Say It Ain't So, Joe" ( New York Post).

I wonder if he's raising his rates.

National Review's Jim Geraghty blames the "Obamabots" for "targeting" Joe:

"Thank God we live in a free country, where you can speak your mind on public issues, without fear that those who disagree will respond by exposing anything you've ever done that you regret or that could embarrass your family.

"Oh, wait, never mind. We have to know, according to some, about Joe the Plumber's tax lien, and how he doesn't have a license -- which, if the smear artists bothered to check the law, he only needs for commercial work, not residential work.

"This is the way our opponents operate now. Destroy anyone who stands in your way. Humiliate them. Make sure that anyone else who ever wants to skeptically question Barack Obama knows that every last bit of their dirty laundry will be aired for all the world to see. Bristol Palin, Trig Palin, -- hey, it's all fair game. They've got to make an example of them. Show them that this sort of dangerous speech won't be allowed in the New America."

Our opponents? Such as the Toledo Blade? And if the McCain camp is going to hold this fellow up as an exemplar, wouldn't it follow that journalists would ask a few questions about him?

Now for a broader look at the post-Hofstra coverage. I think we should be spending more time on the substance of McCain's attacks and whether they're valid. Too much of the chatter has been about how Obama remained cool and unruffled. So what? Is criticism of an opponent's tax policy valid only if he whines or cries or staggers backward? Yes, the candidates' demeanor matters, but part of our job is to explore what they say, and not just in fact-checking pieces. Will Obama's offhand "share the wealth" comment hurt? Where do the two candidates stand on abortion, which McCain brought up? Does Obama have a record of challenging his own party?

Instead, there's been too much Joe, Joe, Joe.

All right, I give in. Let's go to Joe Klein:

"I did want to say a few things about my colleagues -- in general, no names -- and the coverage of the campaign this year.

"Pundits tend to be a lagging indicator. This is particularly true at the end of a political pendulum swing. We've been conditioned by thirty years of certain arguments working -- and John McCain made most of them last night against Barack Obama: you're going to raise our taxes, you're going to spend more money, you want to negotiate with bad guys, you're associated somehow -- the associations have gotten more tenuous over time -- with countercultural and unAmerican activities.

"Again, these arguments have 'worked' for a long time. The Democrats who got themselves elected president during most of my career were those most successful at playing defense: No, no, I'm not going to do any of those things! And so the first reaction of more than a few talking heads Wednesday night was that McCain had done better, maybe even won, because he had made those arguments more successfully than he had in the first two debates. I disagreed, even before the focus groups and snap polls rendered their verdict: I thought McCain was near-incomprehensible when talking about policy, locked in the coffin of conservative thinking and punditry. He spoke in Reagan-era shorthand. He thought that merely invoking the magic words 'spread the wealth' and 'class warfare' he could neutralize Obama.

"But those words and phrases seem anachronistic, almost vestigial now. Indeed, they have become every bit as toxic as Democratic social activist proposals - -government-regulated and subsidized health care, for example -- used to be . . .

"Journalism is, naturally, about the past. We are much better at reporting things that have happened than in predicting the future. We never seem so foolish or obnoxious, especially on TV, as when we accede to the constant demand for crystal-balling. But the obvious danger inherent in journalism is that we tend to get trapped in the assumptions of the past. Too often this year, my colleagues -- especially those who are older than me, but also my fellow baby boomers -- have seemed a bit moldy in our questioning of politicians: What are you going to do about budget deficits? What are you going to do about entitlement programs?

"These are valid questions, but less relevant in a financial crisis that will probably lead to a severe recession -- and especially after 30 years of government neglect of its basic responsibilities."

Maybe that explains the media obsession with whether McCain would utter the words "William Ayers" in debate.

A similar argument from the other Klein, American Prospect's Ezra Klein:

"Part of what's led McCain awry is that elites are, in certain crucial ways, behind the voters. I tend to watch these debates in a room filled with politically involved liberals, and most all of them anxiously cringe every time McCain goes on the attack. Liberals are scarred. They remember all too well the elections they've lost because they were attacked as untrustworthy on national security, profligate with federal dollars, punitive with taxes. So they hear McCain put his Greatest Hits collection on the phonograph and they recoil, sure that those golden oldies will work.

"But voters aren't tuning into the 1988 debate. They see Wall Street falling apart and bridges falling down and employer-based health care dissolving and can't figure out why McCain keeps talking about earmarks, or why they should care who will cut taxes a little bit more. Taxes aren't their biggest problem anymore. Reagan succeeded. Taxes aren't even in the Top 5. But health care is. Education is. And when the conversation turns to those subjects, McCain stumbles and tap dances."

Arianna is angry about McCain's anger:

"John McCain scored the zinger of the night with, 'I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.'

"But his performance in the third debate was, in fact, incredibly Bush-like, mirroring Bush's signature stubbornness -- especially on Iraq -- by doubling down on a failed strategy.

"McCain's reliance on angry, negative, personal attacks on Obama -- including the pathetic Ayers smear and ACORN 'destroying the fabric of democracy' -- has been an unequivocal failure, with the poll numbers to prove it. But instead of course-correcting, McCain doubled down tonight -- coming across as angrier and meaner than ever before.

"This debate wasn't decided on the arguments being made. It was won on the reaction shots. Every time Obama spoke, McCain grimaced, sneered, rapidly blinked, or rolled his eyes . . .

"McCain's contemptuous reactions were so intense and frequent, they've already been turned into a YouTube video."

For the New Republic's Noam Scheiber, McCain lacked a certain fluidity:

"Obama wasn't close to his best. He was much less crisp and coherent than last week, and generally looked a little fried . . .

"Obama was much, much more coherent than McCain, who stopped and started and bobbed and weaved so jarringly he looked like a running back evading a swarming defense (often unsuccessfully) . . .

"Beyond garden-variety incoherence, McCain had three problems I could detect. First, he had a way of turning talking points into complete non sequiturs by slapping them on the end of unrelated answers. My favorite came at the end of his second pass at Ayers and ACORN, when he added, hopefully: '[M]y campaign is about getting this economy back on track, about creating jobs, about a brighter future for America.' Riiiight . . .

"As in previous debates, McCain's most glaring defect was his persistent sneering and dismissiveness. Here's McCain on the Colombia trade deal: 'Free trade with Colombia is something that's a no-brainer. But maybe you ought to travel down there and visit them and maybe you could understand it a lot better.' "

And did I mention I've been to Waziristan?

Tucker Carlson is dispirited:

"Time and again, McCain seemed close to completing an actual argument against Obama, only to pull back at the last moment and meander off onto another point. It was weird -- almost as weird as the creepy smile Obama maintained as McCain attacked him."

And Mac was fighting on the wrong battlefront, says Betsy's Page:

"It's pretty bad when the thing that gets McCain the most passionate is a low attack on his own honor. When the market has gone down over 700 points, the Asian markets are tanking as the debate goes on, and people are worried about their personal finances, no one really cares all that much about what John Lewis said about McCain. It would be different if Obama had said it. But to come back again and again begging for an apology was just lame and off the target of what anyone else cares about when they tune in to watch the debate."

At Right Wing Nuthouse, Rick Moran says McCain sealed his doom:

"Frankly, McCain never came close. He made a couple of good points about education, scored best with his pointed questions (that Obama never answered) about Ayers and ACORN, and had a couple of other nice moments. (I am not sure that McCain gained any support with his eye rolling, sneering, head shaking, and unmanly giggles. Those things matter to many people and I believe we might see over the next 24 hours that voters were turned off by his reactions.)

"But it was hopeless from the start for McCain. This race is pretty much on cruise control now with Obama comfortably (not decisively) ahead. As long as Obama didn't show up drunk, he accomplished what he had to accomplish at the debate.

"McCain needed Obama to show up drunk. He didn't . . .

"Obama's comfortable 6-8 point lead will mushroom in the next 3 weeks and make election day a holy living hell for the GOP with a landslide in both the popular vote and electoral college for Obama and a sweeping away of many Republican stalwarts in the House and Senate. It will be an historic repudiation of Republicans and will place the party in a position where it will probably spend a decade or more in the wilderness."

But Paul Mirengoff at Powerline is more optimistic, citing a new Rasmussen poll:

"If McCain really is, say, 5 percentage points behind Obama, then he's certainly within striking distance. Some might even argue that, at that spread, Obama isn't really ahead, given (a) the margin of error, (b) what happened to him during certain primaries and (c) the notion that black candidates tend to 'underperform' on election day in comparison to how they poll.

"That's not my opinion, particularly in view of the likelihood of voter fraud and Obama's concentration of resources in key states. But I'm pretty sure that, in theory, two and a half weeks is sufficient time to overcome a 5 point lead (assuming, again, that this is what Obama has)."

We're about to find out.

Who knew Fox News was so powerful?

"I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls," Obama tells the NYT Magazine. "If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me, right? Because the way I'm portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?"

The Times-reading part is especially damaging.

Now this is enough to give you heartburn: A minor Republican functionary in California comes up with Obama Bucks, which are food stamps, you see, with the senator's picture, and that is illustrated, get this, with a bucket of fried chicken and a slab of watermelon. The woman, Diane Fedele, says she didn't see anything racist about it. Of course not.

Remember Vicki Iseman? Of course you do. She's the Washington lobbyist that the New York Times attempted to link to McCain last February, based on the suspicions of two unnamed former aides. Now she breaks her silence with National Journal's Ed Pound:

" 'I did not have a sexual relationship with Senator McCain,' she said in a three-hour interview last month in a seventh-floor conference room in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. 'I never had an affair or an inappropriate relationship with Senator McCain, and that means I never acted unethically in my dealings with the senator.' Iseman, a partner in the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay, where she has worked for 18 years, adds, 'I have never even been alone with Senator McCain.'

"Iseman says she answered every question put to her by The Times, but that the newspaper 'chose to disregard' many of her answers. 'The New York Times set out to write a story about a 'romantic relationship' in exchange for legislative favors . . . Make the lobbyist a prostitute -- pretty heady stuff. The only problem was, they were wrong on all counts.'

"In strong language, Iseman also lashed out at John Weaver, a former top McCain strategist who left the campaign after a power struggle in July 2007. She said that Weaver had an 'ax to grind' and had used The Times to orchestrate the story and damage McCain's presidential campaign. 'The New York Times had four reporters [work] almost four months on this,' she said in an e-mail to National Journal this month, 'and John Weaver made them his marionettes.' Weaver, she says, was 'Machiavellian' and a 'Benedict Arnold.'

"Weaver, a seasoned political operative, flatly denied Iseman's assertions. 'I love John McCain,' he said in an interview, 'and I wouldn't do anything to harm him.' Weaver said he responded to only one of eight written questions from The Times and put the answer on the record. 'I responded accurately,' he told NJ. 'I did not help leak that story.'

"The Times stands behind its article. 'I think that the story stands up, an important story, a strong story,' says Dean Baquet, an assistant managing editor who runs the newspaper's Washington bureau and who helped oversee The Times' reporting. The newspaper 'had ample, multiple sources for the story,' he says, and had aggressively pursued Iseman's side, staking her out, sending her e-mails, and leaving her phone messages. He says that his reporters sought her comment 'very early on in the process,' but 'we couldn't get her to sit down and talk.' "