Joe The Plumber Is The Star of Presidential Debate

The final face-to-face clash between the two fierce White House rivals granted an unexpected 15 minutes of fame to Joe Wurzelbacher.Until Sunday, when he bumped into Obama while the Democratic presidential candidate was doing some door-to-door canvassing, Wurzelbacher was living a normal life, unknown to most of his fellow Americans.

But his encounter with Obama in Toledo, Ohio, and a spirited debate about the front-running Democrat's tax policy, turned him into a media star.
Both candidates spoke directly to Wurzelbacher, turning him into a real life version of "Joe Six Pack," the ordinary guy chasing the American dream, as they faced off in their third and final debate."Joe wants to buy the business that he's been in for all these years," McCain said, using Obama's encounter with the plumber to flay his rival over a tax plan he maintains would shackle small businesses.

"Joe wants to buy the business that he's been in for all these years."Worked 10, 12 hours a day. And he wanted to buy the business, but he looked at your tax plan and he saw that he was going to pay much higher taxes."Obama hit back, with his version of his chat with Joe."What I essentially said to him was, five years ago, when you were in the position to buy your business, you needed a tax cut then."And what I want to do is to make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entrepreneur who doesn't yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now."

Wurzelbacher has emerged as a hero of the conservative talk radio community for his debate with Obama and his contention that the Obama economic plan would make him pay higher taxes and snuff out his hopes of expanding the business.Addressing "my old buddy Joe," McCain said Wednesday that if he becomes president, he wanted to give every US family "a 5,000 dollar refundable tax credit" to be applied against health care.

Meanwhile MySpace will stream Friday's debate between US presidential contenders Barack Obama and John McCain live online in an Internet first and provide software tools letting people see which candidate is in tune with their views.The exchange between the candidates will be broadcast at a MyDebates.org website the social networking powerhouse created to add what it hopes will be an increasingly interactive online component to the White House race.