Final POTUS Debate is a PlumberAos Screen

Say it ain’t so, Joe? That was Gov. Sarah Palin’s rehearsed line in her single debate with Sen. Joe Biden. Tonight’s third and final debate between Senator’s John McCain and Barack Obama was also about a guy named Joe. Joe Wurzelbacher that is, an Ohio plumber, whose insertion into the final presidential contest was equally practiced.

Listening in from the XM Radio studios with election co-anchors Joe Mathieu and Rebecca Roberts, we counted no less than nine references by the populist-sounding McCain to Joe-the-Plumber. Like Mitt Romney, heretofor the 2008 candidate most proned to killing a good line, the senior senator could barely contain his glee as he pounded Obama for telling Joe at a Toledo, OH, rally that his tax plan is to “distribute the wealth .” It was a Mirror play, run well the first few times but, ultimately, run five or six or seven times too many.

Symbols are as important as words in the discipline of playmaking. And Joe-the-plumber is a case in point. His hope of buying a business, his worry over taxes, his entrepreneurial striving, are all images that both parties want for their own brands. So his name was bounced about, like a strategy play-toy, tussled away by Obama briefly who decided that he, too, should talk about the Everyman Plumber (three times).

For playmakers following The Playmaker’s Table, Joe Wurzelbacher was an unwitting surrogate, specifically a Partner , whose allegiances are presently unknown but coveted. McCain ran Screen’s on Joe, only to have Obama run Crowds to keep a piece of the plumber for himself.

Click on the left for this playmaker''s free podcast, and tune in to XM POTUS (channel 130) on Fridays at 5:30 p.m. EST each week to hear Plays for the Presidency live.

Post by Alan Kelly

Photo Credit: LA Times