 Rivals
Split, With Joe in the Middle
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
(10/16/08) )
Barack Obama looked like a prosecutor
delivering a polished summation in a long civil case,
Joe the Plumber v. George W. Bush.
John McCain was closer to a personal injury
lawyer, staring into the camera to address “Joe the Plumber” as if he were
standing by with an 800 number. (“If you or a loved one has
been wronged in an accident ...” or in this case, in an Obama
tax bracket.)
It was the last debate before the November election, the last chance
to measure the two candidates side by side.
But much of the debate turned into a tug
of war over Joe the Plumber, an Ohio man who had an off-the-cuff
discussion with Mr. Obama about his tax policies and
complained that if he fulfilled his “American
dream” of owning his own plumbing company his taxes under
Mr. Obama would rise. Mr. Obama told him other less-fortunate people
needed a tax break to “spread the wealth.” The plumber’s
name was invoked more than 20 times.
Mr. McCain repeated his name more than
nine times and kept looking into the camera and addressing
Joe the Plumber directly, as when he said, “Joe, you’re
rich! Congratulations.”
At a moment when conservative Republicans
are complaining that President Bush has led the country
into socialism with a country-club face, Mr. McCain went
on the attack against Mr. Obama for “class
warfare.”
It was Mr. McCain’s last chance to cast doubt on his opponent’s
character and credentials, and he threw the kitchen sink at him — along
with the plumber. Mr. McCain invoked class war, culture war and
the Iraq war. He cast himself as a victim of a Democratic attack
machine, calling Representative John Lewis’s reference to
former Gov. George Wallace of Georgia in criticizing the McCain-Palin
campaign for stirring up the crowds “so hurtful.”
They were seated, and this time, Mr. McCain
made a point of looking at Mr. Obama, if often with a
disdainful smirk and roll of the eyes. He kept taking
out his pen to write on his yellow pad, almost as though
it were a surrogate for reaching across and throttling
the younger man he does not think should be challenging
him because, as his aides put it, he hasn’t bled.
Instead of roaming restlessly across the
stage, Mr. McCain roamed restlessly across Mr. Obama’s résumé.
Mr. McCain spoke vividly, and often personally, even mentioning his
adopted daughter from Bangladesh in a terse exchange about abortion.
He smiled tightly when Mr. Obama spoke, perhaps under instruction
from aides not to be grumpy as he attacked on multiple fronts.
But viewers saw not the happy warrior
so much as the harping warrior as Mr. McCain needled
Mr. Obama about his relationship with an “old,
washed up terrorist,” William Ayers, the group Acorn (he
said a voter fraud scandal was “destroying the fabric of
democracy”), and Hugo Chávez. With viewers obsessing
about their shrinking retirement funds and a drop of more than
700 points in the Dow, Mr. McCain yanked the conversation to free
trade with Colombia and vouchers in the District of Columbia. “Free
Trade with Colombia is something that is a no-brainer,” he
said scornfully. “But maybe you ought to travel down there
and visit them and maybe you could understand it a lot better.”
Mr. McCain succeeded at steering the conversation
away from the economic crisis that is the conversation
in America, and Mr. Obama let himself be led away. Mr.
McCain tried to distance himself from the Republican
in the White House. “I am not President Bush,” Mr.
McCain said. “If you wanted to run against President Bush,
you should have run four years ago.”
Mr. Obama was calm, but also flat and dispassionate. He looked defensive,
smiling and shaking his head as the fusillade of charges came at
him.
Mr. McCain was more focused and had a narrative about Joe the Plumber,
but his tone was often sarcastic. He managed to change the subject
from the economy, as he tried to woo independent and working-class
voters and put himself on the side of the working man. And in this
bad economy, he even knows his name: Joe.
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