Obama vs. Joe the Plumber

The original text is in French. French to English translation is as follows:

“I have to go and get ready for the debate, but what just happened is good practice.” That’s what Barack Obama said on Tuesday, after he talked to Joe the Plumber, whose real name is Joe Wurzelbacher. He met him in the surroundings of Toledo, Ohio.

During the debate, which took place on Wednesday, John McCain talked to Joe the Plumber as if the latter were his favorite interlocutor, directly through the camera. Obama followed in his footsteps, and kind of promoted Joe to the most popular person of the night.

That is an excellent strategy for McCain; it enabled him to understand, after watching the talk of Obama versus Joe, that the plumber from Ohio would rather be on the Republican side. Obama indeed wants to impose a tax on incomes larger than $250,000 a year, at the same level as they used to be when Bill Clinton was president, that is to say 39%. When Bush was president, this percentage was up to 36%. Joe wants to purchase a company whose income will exceed this level. He’ll thus have to pay taxes and doesn’t really enjoy this idea at all. He’s not a Wall Street billionaire, but a hard working ordinary American. A perfect illustration of the McCain’s campaign, too – a campaign that for the most part lies, except on this matter: the candidate makes it a point of honor to try and convince Americans that Obama wants to tax all of them.

As for Joe, he had a hard job right after the debate, explaining to the media that his vote would be kept a secret; although he essentially based his arguments on McCain’s statements about taxation, and criticized Obama for an eloquence which hides, according to him, a lack of experience. To make it short, whereas instant polls widely lead one to believe that Obama was the winner of the debate, McCain had at least one supporter in the American middle classes, named Joe the Plumber.

(By the way, if you like this strange idea that one voter only could have the ability to decide an election’s final result, I advise you to watch the film Swing Vote, with Kevin Costner, released last August).

The entirety of the discussion between Obama and Joe is worth a look. You can find it there: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/spread-the-weal.html

This gives us information on the president to come. Obama directly confronted Joe’s fiscal matters, right before the cameras, and he immediately understands that this conversation is going to be a tough one for him. He tries to get around the problem in the first place, pointing out that thanks to the future president Obama, Joe’s company will benefit from a tax credit on his health expenses. However, he nevertheless has to admit that the taxes Joe will have to pay are no doubt likely to increase. At last, he tries to connect and justify his political and economical perspective within the present context, saying that if his plan had been put into practice for ten years, whereas Joe’s assets were lower than $250,000 a year, the plumber would have saved on his taxes during all that time. This hypothetical argument is not so helpful, as Joe isn’t the type of man who looks back. In the meanwhile, Obama manages to find another, yet better, argument. He claims that his proposal of decreasing taxation for investors whose capitals don’t exceeed $250,000 will give Joe’s customers the possibility to pay him for his services.

As long as the talk lasts, Joe tries to get a word in edgeways and can hardly do it because Obama speaks non-stop, stringing words together just as if he wanted to convince himself of his own credibility.

The discussion between Obama and Joe the Plumber ultimately ends so: the president to come is open (he doesn’t deny that Joe will have taxes to pay), he knows how to think over and adapt to a difficult situation, but he’s so talkative that he can almost “bury” us under his words, and he’s actually not a good listener.

Oh yes, and while we’re on the subject, Obama did win the discussion. Not that much on the form rather than on the substance. McCain was as strung-up as the strings of a violin and always on the verge of counterattacking. Obama had a cool attitude. That’s what we needed.