Gray On CPAC

Our literary editor Freddy Gray has a report in The Spectator on his experience at CPAC. The closing paragraph has an amusing scene with Freddy and the Plumber:

Outside, I bump into a bald man smoking. It’s Joe the Plumber. He looks exhausted. I scrounge a cigarette from him and we stand together puffing away. I ask him what the future holds. ‘I think I am going to take on the IRS,’ he says. ‘If not, I guess I go back to doing what I was doing.’ A young conference attendee approaches us, breathless with excitement, and asks for Joe’s opinion on the best way of reforming American democracy. Joe listens patiently to the boy’s ambitious schemes. He cracks an avuncular smile, puts out his cigarette, and says: ‘I’ll have to think about that and get back to you.’ With that, he shuffles back towards the hotel, perhaps to sort out the Republican party, or maybe just to fix a leak.