Grading PolitiFact (Ohio): The Wurzelbacher dilemma: Is an Air Force plumber a plumber?

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

 Horse feathers.


The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

The fact checkers:

Sabrina Eaton:  writer, researcher
Robert Higgs:  editor


Analysis:

As one might anticipate from the epigraph, the context serves as the key to this fact check.

Most (or at least many) people know of "Joe the Plumber," Joe Wurzelbacher, a Toledo man vaulted to modest fame after an unscripted and candid conversation  in 2008 with a campaigning Barack Obama.

Since that initial boost to notoriety, Wurzelbacher entered into a congressional race as the Republican candidate in a redrawn Ohio district against veteran of Congress Marcy Kaptur.  Kaptur squeezed out fellow Democrat and congressional veteran Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primary.

The fact check concerns Wurzelbacher's status as a plumber, the Kaptur campaign's attempts to exploit that status as a campaign issue and Wurzelbacher's response to Kaptur's tactics.  PolitiFact fact checks the latter, and the former two constitute the critical context.

We'll examine all three issues.

Is Wurzelbacher a plumber?

Wurzelbacher's status as a plumber was questioned fairly promptly after his conversation with Obama.  Wurzelbacher admitted he had no license, stating it was his understanding that his work was covered under the license of his employer.  An Ohio union leader appears to confirm that Wurzelbacher could perform plumbing work legally in at least some localities in Ohio (bold emphasis added):

Mr. Wurzelbacher s notoriety has raised the ire of Tom Joseph, business manager for Local 50 of the United Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters, and Service Mechanics, who claimed that Mr. Wurzelbacher didn t [sic] undergo any apprenticeship training.
(...)
Mr. Joseph said Mr. Wurzelbacher could only legally work in the townships, but not in any municipality in Lucas County or elsewhere in the country.

Wurzelbacher says he has experience in plumbing from his three-year enlistment in the Air Force. Perhaps that experience came partly through a program like the one described here.

Is that enough to make him a plumber?  The dictionary appears to support his claim:

1. One that installs and repairs pipes and plumbing.

PolitiFact quoted some authorities in Ohio to the effect that one requires an Ohio license to qualify as a plumber, acknowledged Wurzelbacher's claim of experience in the military and declared:

We’re not making the final call on whether Wurzelbacher should call himself "Joe the Plumber."

Since PolitiFact won't touch it, I'll make the call.  It's fine for Wurzelbacher to call himself "Joe the Plumber" because he clearly meets the conversational definition of the term and because the nickname carries national recognition.  He should not call himself a plumber in the context of marketing his plumbing services to Ohio consumers unless he obtains the appropriate license.  That use of the term butts up against Ohio's legal definition of "plumber" rather than the conversational definition.

Wurzelbacher is definitely a plumber in the conversational sense reflected in the dictionary and apparently possesses considerable trade experience from his service in the armed forces.  He is not a plumber in terms of possessing a corresponding license in Ohio.

The charge from the Kaptur campaign

PolitiFact:

For months, Kaptur’s team has told reporters that  Wurzelbacher isn’t a plumber, a charge that doesn’t sit well with Wurzelbacher.

Wurzelbacher's obviously a plumber in the conversational sense, so let's look at the URLs provided by PolitiFact to observe the context:

Kaptur spokesman Steve Fought dissed Wurzelbacher's authenticity, saying, "His name's not Joe. He's not a plumber. And we're not sure what congressional district he lives in. Other than that, he's the perfect candidate."

Politico's David Catanese characterizes the statement from Fought as dissing Wurzelbacher's authenticity.

Next:

"His name is not Joe, he is not a plumber, and he doesn't live in the 9th District," Kaptur spokesman Steve Fought said of Wurzelbacher's candidacy. "Other than that, he is the ideal Republican candidate."

Fought was referring to Wurzelbacher's lack of an Ohio plumbing license when television cameras recorded him asking then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama a tax policy question during a 2008 campaign stop in the Toledo area.

Oh, this is good stuff.

The latter example came from the Cleveland Plain Dealer under Sabrina Eaton's byline.  Eaton is also the writer and researcher of the PolitiFact Ohio fact check we're examining.

The snippet from Eaton's report contains a feature unusual in objective reporting:  "Fought was referring to Wurzelbacher's lack of a plumbing license."  If Fought said he was referring to Wurzelbacher's lack of a plumbing license then Eaton is entitled to write it like this:  "Fought said he was referring to Wurzelbacher's lack of a plumbing license."  It's objective reporting phrased the latter way since the reader understands that Fought gave a clear statement of his meaning.  When the reporter does not attribute the information to Fought, the reader is left to understand the statement as the reporter's interpretation.  Objective reporters do not interpret statements.  They simply report the statements.  (Addendum:  Eaton has since informed me that Fought told her he was referring to the lack of a plumbing license)

The context of Fought's statement argues against Eaton's apparent interpretation.  Wurzelbacher's name isn't Joe?  Is that also because of the lack of an Ohio license?  He doesn't live in the district?  Is that also license-related?  The Politico writer seems to have the right of it:  Fought intended to diminish Wurzelbacher's authenticity.  The lack of a plumbing license is irrelevant to the authenticity of Wurzelbacher's claim to be a plumber.

To affect the legitimacy of Wurzelbacher's claim as a plumber in the conversational sense, Fought's criticism has to mean that Kaptur's opponent does not qualify as a plumber in the conversational sense.

No fact check of the claim that Wurzelbacher isn't a plumber, eh?

Wurzelbacher's response

PolitiFact:

In April 2012 RedState.com published a column by Wurzelbacher titled "Why Doesn’t Marcy Kaptur Respect Veterans?" In his essay, Wurzelbacher said that Kaptur’s proposal for a Veterans Jobs Corps to employ 20,000 veterans in projects to restore public lands, would reject their military training and instead "turn them into federally employed landscapers and groundskeepers."

"Kaptur and her campaign staff certainly don’t respect my own military training," Wurzelbacher’s column continued. "That’s obvious from the way they call me a ‘faux’ plumber. Are all our other veterans ‘fake’ in their jobs, too? Marcy’s campaign has denied my military experience several times before, each time proving that she and her staff don’t respect veterans and our military experience."

Credit Eaton with providing appropriate context indicating a focus on the legitimacy of job training in the armed services.

The conclusions she and PolitiFact subsequently draw deserve considerably less credit.

(Q)uestioning his licensure credentials is a far cry from impugning Wurzelbacher’s military service. Training in the military aside, Ohio requires a plumber to have a license, which Wurzelbacher does not have.

Given that is the case, we think it’s beyond False to say that claiming he is not a plumber somehow diminishes his military experience and shows disrespect for veterans, as Wurzelbacher claimed.

On the Truth-O-Meter, Wurzelbacher’s claim rates Pants on Fire.

PolitiFact completely swallowed the explanation from the Kaptur campaign (not to mention Eaton's apparently non-objective judgment) that saying Wurzelbacher is not a plumber has merely to do with his work credentials in Ohio.  Eaton's credulity on this point beggars belief.  The attack from the Kaptur campaign sinks to incoherence when understood as Eaton sees it.

Granted, there is at least a mild problem with Wurzelbacher's reply.  He neglects the possibility that the Kaptur campaign would deliberately argue that he isn't an authentic plumber merely for the lack of an Ohio plumbing license.  Ben Nguyen (fictional example) could be the greatest plumber in all of Southeast Asia, for example, and the Kaptur campaign would feel comfortable saying he's not a real plumber because of the lack of an Ohio license. 

But if the campaign said that about Nguyen wouldn't it obviously show a lack of respect for his record in Southeast Asia?  The Ohio license isn't the be-all-end-all of plumbing qualifications, is it?

At worst Wurzelbacher is guilty only of mild hyperbole.  It is logically possible that the Kaptur campaign immensely respects his qualifications as a plumber yet sends the opposite message out of sheer ineptitude.  Between calling him a fake plumber and proposing to channel veterans into jobs that do not correspond to their service training, however, Wurzelbacher has sufficient evidence to conclude that Kaptur probably carries little respect for military job training.

PolitiFact reaches the opposite conclusion only by ignoring the holes in Fought's story.  Fought either tried to pass an irrelevancy off as relevant or disrespected Wurzelbacher's service training.  The latter represents the charitable interpretation and matches the context.

The grades:

Sabrina Eaton: F
Robert Higgs: F

Eaton and Higgs are journalists reporting badly.