The Screwups of Campaign '08

Barack Obama
Oct. 11, 2008

"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." — Obama, defending his tax plan to Ohio resident Samuel Wurzelbacher (soon known as "Joe the Plumber"), who argued that Obama's policy hurts small-business owners like himself.

Though Wurzelbacher initially refused to disclose whom he supported in the presidential race — especially after media scrutiny uncovered that he owed back taxes to the state of Ohio — he later publicly campaigned for Republican John McCain, telling a crowd in the battleground state, "If you look at spreading the wealth, that's honestly right out of Karl Marx's mouth." The Obama campaign continued to insist that Joe the Plumber would get a bigger tax cut under its economic plan than under the McCain campaign's.