Thanks to the now famous Joe the Plumber, all of America has been served notice of Barack Obama's plans for the American economy.
Obama intends to spread the wealth around: From your accounts to those of his friends and supporters.
Rarely have we had candor from Obama in this long campaign, and even rarer have been the efforts of the Manhattan-Beltway media elites to tease the details out from the Chicago machine's favorite pol.
But in a matter of two minutes, Joe's objections to Obama's soak-the-small-businesses-of-America's tax plan evoked from Obama not just a rebuke about the need to take care of "the people behind Joe," but Obama's own pithy summary of his objective: To spread the wealth around.
John McCain could not have hoped for such a bit of clarity, and now that it has been delivered from The One, McCain ought to make it the one theme of the last three weeks of the campaign.
Not only does Obama intend for the Death Tax to return in time for the passing of the Greatest Generation --spreading their wealth from their grandchildren to the tax coffers of the state-- Obama also intends to spread the fruits of long labors far and wide.
The ants have been told that the grasshoppers need a break. The grasshoppers have been behind the ants for a long time, after all, and the winter is upon us all.
Clarity, as my friend Dennis Prager likes to say, is much to be preferred over agreement and Obama has provided clarity. Not about Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright, but very much about his plans for your (much reduced these past few weeks) savings.
From each according to their productivity, to each according to their wants.
The polls inched closer in the days before and following the debate, and as word of Obama's rebuke of Joe the Plumber travels, they should draw closer still. Our enemies are not much discussed these days as Iraq has stabilized and the jihadists have gone to ground for the duration of the election, and Obama's platitudes went unchallenged by Lehrer, Brokaw and Schieffer.
But Joe did the MSM's trio's work for them, and we do indeed have a focus for the last few days of the very long campaign.
John Murtha offered even more focus, branding half of Pennsylvania as "racist," and reminding us all of Obama's slam of rural and small town America as clinging to God and guns in their bitterness.
Is the sudden infusion of Obamian candor enough to bring the battleground states back to red, and the race back to the dead-heat it was in early September?
There's no way to know yet, but if America dodges European style statism, it will be because of a plumber from Ohio.
The Framers would be pleased.