Even though our economy is going through an economic crisis that has been referred to as the worst shape our economy has been in since the great depression, by multiple significant political figures (including Obama), our focus is currently trained on a plumber named Joe, who doesn't even have a plumbing license. It is ridiculous that at this point in the presidential campaigns the candidates are focusing so much on one person, it's understandable that people want to see how the candidates policy's will affect real people, but does that mean that they need to bring up "Joe the plumber" 2o times in one debate? Right now people need to hear about more important issues than one plumber who happens to be making $250,00 a year.
But what was even worse than the "Joe the plumber" scenario, was the chain of events following this person. The media found Joe, and they found out more about Joe than either of the candidates had known when they mentioned Joe on national television. First and foremost, Joe Wurzelbacher doesn't have a plumbing license, and even more striking, he already owes taxes to our government (maybe if everybody paid their taxes correctly we wouldn't have some of these problems...)
When these facts were uncovered, John McCain condoned the Obama campaign for putting so much pressure and coverage on Joe the plumber (Wasn't it John McCain that brought Joe into the debate on Wednesday night?) But even after he reprimanded Obama for "continuing to focus on Joe the plumber" McCain has still repetitively brought up Joe at his campaigns. Joe Lieberman even attempted to say Joe the plumber in Spanish, to help appeal to the Cuban-American voters in Florida.
But at this campaign in Florida, McCain did discuss other issues, like how “Senator Obama says that he wanted to spread your wealth around...Obama claims that he wants to give a tax break to the middle class, but not only did he vote for higher taxes on the middle class in the Senate, his plan gives away your tax dollars to those who don’t pay taxes. That’s not a tax cut, that’s welfare.” While Hari Sevugan (an Obama spokesperson) points out that with McCain's health care proposal he will give tax incentives to everybody, not just people that pay their taxes.
At least the candidates spoke about the actual issue without mentioning Joe for a couple of minutes.

Joe the plumber is a really enlightening citizen in many ways, he brings up the concept of how Americans that don't pay their taxes might be affecting our economy. But the truth of the matter is that a topic that significant should've been mentioned before, and even now the candidates can explore that issue more, but Joe the plumber doesn't need to be brought in as the focus of the campaign any more than it has already been.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/us/politics/17webplumber.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=obama&st=cse&oref=slogin