Joe the Plumber Creates a Crisis of Confidence

Test Ticker

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. The truth is, we're a long way from our $600,000 goal, and we have to get as close as we can by Tuesday so we don't have to make hard decisions come January. If you value our reporting, please consider pitching in today.

$600,000

We still need to raise 400,000: Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all matters.

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. We need to raise $600,000, or get as close as we can, by Tuesday so we don't need to make hard decisions come January. Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all makes a difference.

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

Is this what we’ve come to? Republicans lawmakers listen to conservative experts and Democratic lawmakers listen to liberal experts, and because everyone listens to people who will tell them what they want to hear the idea of expertise is rendered meaningless, thus opening the door for Joe the freaking Plumber to advise the Conservative Working Group in Congress on how to proceed on the stimulus bill.

This isn’t a single, random, insanely silly moment. This is a sign that something is deeply wrong with the way we make policy in this country. It shouldn’t make you laugh. It should make you cry. (Okay, maybe laugh and cry.)