Red State/ Blue State
Joe the plumber
DAVE SIMPSON & GREG BEAN

Dear Greg:

It's hard to believe, old pal, but after a campaign that's been going on for two years now, it finally took a plumber from Toledo to define the issues.

After all the fundraising, and the speeches, and the flying around in planes with their names painted on their tails, here's what it comes down to: Your guy wants some more of our money to "spread around.'' And my guy doesn't.

They both apparently now hate everything about George Beelzebub Bush, and they both despise "greed on Wall Street,'' as if that's somehow different than greed in Washington. And they both prattle on about "change," as if virtually anything is better than what we have today.

I can think of a lot of changes that wouldn't be better, can't you, Greg?

So for me, Joe the Plumber summed up the whole deal: Obama wants some more of Joe's money, if Joe can figure out a way to make $250,000 a year. Obama says he needs to "spread that money around'' to other people, some of whom don't pay income taxes at all.

Of course our liberal brethren in the media had to destroy Joe for being against higher taxes. They got to work and found out that Joe doesn't have a plumber's license and that he owes some back property taxes. Some figured he was a Republican plant, but that didn't square with Obama walking down his street and approaching Joe. Even Karl Rove couldn't orchestrate that.

Now, let's be clear about something, Greg. I don't make $250,000 a year, even though I write half of a swell political column in New Jersey. As a newsman, I've never made anywhere close to $250,000 a year. But, I'm still enough of a cockeyed optimist to think someday I might, and if I do, then the government shouldn't automatically get some of that money to "spread around."

And I don't think the big businesses that many of us work for are by definition evil. Some are, some aren't. But this hating each other over how successful we are is a ploy by the politicians to divide us.

Honestly, Greg, the government reminds me of a crying 8-year-old in the back seat of a car, on a long vacation drive, who has already had three Cokes, popcorn and cotton candy, and demands another Big Gulp and a box of Nerds, even though he's thrown up twice already.

There's only one thing to say to that kid, Greg: NO MORE, BUSTER! THAT'S ALL YOU GET!

Wake up and smell the coffee, old pal. The Tax Foundation says you live in the state with the most rotten business climate in the country, thanks to the taxes you already pay. Your governor wants to raise tolls on the highways. Can't you see that giving these spending addicts more money is the last thing we should do?

I'm voting for McCain because he says he won't shovel even more of our hard-earned dollars into the gaping maw of greedy big government. Enough, Greg, is enough. Surely you agree.

Your fly-over country BFF Red State Dave d_simpson@bresnan.net

Dear Dave:

I am so sick of Joe the Plumber. But, unlike you, I apparently listened to the answer Barack Obama gave Joe when he asked the BIG QUESTION about his taxes going up under a Democratic administration, and I thought Obama gave a very complete and

well-reasoned response. As usual, however, his critics only pick up a small snippet of that answer and try to boil the meaning of the whole thing into that out-of-context phrase. Before you talk about this campaign being defined by a plumber from Toledo, I think you ought to parse the rest of Obama's answer into your criticism and not just a twoword sound bite that didn't have much to do with what he actually said. So I'm not going to defend what

Obama said. He did that very rationally in his own words, and he doesn't need me to explain what he said versus what people think he said, or would like us to think he said.

Nope, Joe the Plumber didn't define the campaign for me. What defined it for me as the candidates neared the finish line was Sarah Palin, who couldn't seem to give a coherent answer to any question that wasn't cribbed for her in advance, but whose people thought the voters could be hoodwinked by dressing her in a $150,000 wardrobe and giving her more money for makeup advice and help ($22,800) than they paid McCain's foreign policy adviser.

If Sarah had spent a little less on makeup and a little more on foreign policy advice, she wouldn't have embarrassed herself, her party and her running mate with that "I can see Russia from Alaska" nonsense, and claiming that gave her more foreign policy experience than her Democratic opponents.

Instead, we get this self-proclaimed, antiintellectual, salt-of-the-earth, Joe Six-Pack hockey mom dressed in a bunch of frocks, skirts and cute shoes from Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus while she talks about going to Washington to fight for the little guy.

If she really wanted to make that point in a believable fashion, she would have spent three or four hundred bucks at Target or Wal-Mart and called it a day. Maybe she was just intimidated by the $300,000 wardrobe Cindy Mc- Cain wore throughout the campaign, but maybe she just got her first taste of the good life and figured, "What the hell?"

A lot of the real hockey moms out there could have related to Sarah in dresses and shoes from Target, or even J. Jill, and probably would have applauded her for it. Instead, she made the perplexing choice of outfitting herself in togs Joe the Plumber couldn't afford, and that made a lot of the people who might have supported her wonder who the "real" Sarah is — the moose-hunting lady in the orange vest and Elmer Fudd hat, or Slick Sarah dressed in the clothes advertised in The New York Times fall fashion magazine supplement. And if the real Sarah is that Saks Fifth Avenue Sarah, what would she do if she got to Washington, where there's an even bigger cookie jar to raid and spend foolishly?

Well, we've got a pretty good idea what she'd do. George W. (Shrub) Bush has been doing it for nearly eight years, and that's why we've got the biggest budget deficit in history.

I can't wait for Nov. 4.

Your flannel-wearing friend Blue State Greg gbean@gmnews.com