Plumbing the rhetoric

To Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, who studded their discussions at Wednesday night’s presidential debate with fawning references to “Joe the Plumber,” the once-derided tradesman was a classic hands-on hero, a celebrated common man, the sort of guy who puts the “I can” back into American.

But to plumbers around New York, the quick ascent seemed a good deal more complex. Granted, they said, the political machine had seized them as a symbol. But of what?

[From The New York Plumber Is No Average Joe - NYTimes.com]