Plumbers and So Forth

By now, everyone's parsed to death this whole "Joe the Plumber" guy who popped up in Wednesday's debate. Of course we've all found out that this guy may or may not be a plumber, may or may not be licensed to be a plumber, may or may not actually make $250K a year, may or may not have paid his taxes, may or may not be in any position to purchase a plumbing business, may or may not be registered to vote, may or may not be a Republican, may or may not be tangentially related (through marriage) to Charles Keating, and may or may not have been a GOP plant. All we really know is that he looks like Michael Chiklis.

Setting that all aside, it was really fortunate for Senator McCain that Senator Obama had a 6 minute discussion with "Joe the Plumber." Imagine for a second if it hadn't been Joe. Suppose it had been Eric the Plumber, Terrance the Plumber, Darnell the Plumber, Janice the Plumber, or (God help us all) Hussein the Plumber. Imagine how embarrassing that would have been for the McCain campaign: hitching their populist hopes to some guy with the same name as some other guy that we forcibly deposed.

And on the other side of the coin, they should be happy that he was a plumber. What if Joe was an electrician instead (pretty good), a proctologist (icky), a septic repairman (really icky), an actuary (what's the heck is that?), a hairdresser (really gay), or Governor of Alaska (worse than an actuary).

Imagine if Hussein the Septic Repairman had carried on this conversation with Obama. The McCain campaign would have had to abandon the whole faux populism thing and have to jump straight to implying that Obama associates with poop suckers with terrorist sounding names.

Which, honestly, would have upped the level of discourse considerably.

However, Joe the Plumber now joins the joins the ranks of such illustrious person as Catherine the Great, Eric the Red, Smokey the Bear by gaining the middle name "The." Unfortunately for him, now that his middle name is changed, he will be purged from the Ohioan voter roles because of a clerical oversight.

I say it's a win/win.