As a spokesman for plumbers, wealthy small business people or anyone without a family tie to one of John McCain’s richest and most generous backers, “Joe” is a fraud, like his presidential candidate and his running mate. How inadvertently honest of McCain’s campaign to pick a spokesman just like them.

Based on “Joe’s” real income and his prospects for income based on past performance (absent sizable family gifts) he would gain more under Obama’s tax plan than under McCain. So why is he advocating for those who oppose his economic interests? Because he needs the cash? Because he mimics the attitudes of family wealth, even if once or twice removed? Or is it because of his persistent fantasy that he’ll win the lottery today, or, like Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, that he will be wildly successful tomorrow.

The calm, competent, professional often seems called upon to remind the amateur, the panicked, the desperate and the greedy that hope is not a plan. Nor is it a rational tax or economic recovery plan for an America bleeding from every industry in every city and farm, from every pot-filled road and dangling bridge, and from every uninspected cargo container of fruit, toothpaste and children’s toys.

“Joe the Plumber” is as artless, as fraudulent a representative of working Americans as would be John McCain or Sarah Palin. We need a professional, not an angry man who prefers to butt with head rather than think with it.