Joe Proxy

If you’ve been following the US presidential election you would have noticed this campaign’s typical voter. The Democrats have Joe the Plumber, the Republicans Joe Six-Pack. The idea of Joe is to connect the candidates with the voters. It is a way for the candidates to say, "Yes, I really do care about the average American." That average American is the blue collar worker who is presented as the backbone of society.

Joe Six-Pack is an obvious creation by the Republicans, not a real person. But Joe the Plumber is purported to be a real person, someone named Joe that Barack Obama met on the campaign trail, and who also happens to be a plumber. I doubt Joe the Plumber is a real person, and that he is really an amalgam of people that Obama has met on the trail. But if he is real, I wonder how he feels about being a proxy for ‘all Americans’. Does he care that he is no longer an individual, with real concerns. Or does he not mind that he has become an idea, relegated to the position of proxy.

It is of course part of the politician’s job to connect with the voters. It is, after all, how the politician gains votes, and office. The problem I have with the two Joes is that they are proxies, ideas meant to connect with the voter. But the two Joes are not the whole electorate. They do not, and can not, represent all voters. Indeed, the more the two Joes are used in a campaign, the less they are characters, and the more they are caricatures.

Another problem with the teo Joes is that they are both male. By using the idea of Joe, the candidates are saying, and reinforcing, the idea that politics, essentially, is men’s business. No reasonable candidate would assert that politics is men’s business, and would celebrate women’s sufferage as well as the involvement and contribution of women to politics. Indeed, women’s election to public office. But the political discourse is still, by and far, directed towards men.

Until such time as candidates are willing to consistently refer to Jill the Plumber in their campaign, the message will always be, "Politics is a man’s game."