Friday, October 17, 2008

Joe the Plumber Redux

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

We all now know more about Joe the Plumber then we ever wanted to. Or John the wanna-be plumber as the case may be.

Rachel was right last night when she opened her show by saying that the real outcome of the debate was not the insta-polls, nor the pundits, but rather where the conversation turned. She correctly explained that the conversation was all about the relationship of John McCain and George Bush. Obama had an ad out first thing in the morning showing John saying “I voted with Bush more than 90% of the time” and McCain had an ad out saying he was NOT George Bush.

The fun part is that the McCain ad was more effective in tying him to Bush then the Obama ad because negatives have opposite power. Here’s what that means:

Don’t think about elephants.

What are you thinking about?

As an aside, that’s why when someone tell you that Obama is a Muslim, instead of saying “no, he’s not”, you say “no, he’s a Christian”.

But back to Joe.

Andy Warhol once said that we each get our 15 minutes of fame. While there is no telling precisely who will end up on TV by talking to a candidate, let’s be clear: Joe made direct misrepresentations of himself. Not a plumber, not planning on buying a business, even if he were buying a business, the specific one is not bringing in the amount of money Joe said it was. That “being a taxpayer” is even questionable, with the lien against him.

We can learn a couple things here: first, lying is bad. Second, saying anything in front of TV cameras can have unintended consequences. So what about you?