Ideally, every presidential debate would be filled with substantive, policy-oriented questions about the most pressing issues of the day. There is, of course, a downside to this: candidates are prepped with rehearsed and predictable soundbites to these questions, and for the most part, in a primary debate they’ll all say the same thing. To actually learn something interesting about the candidates, an occasional off-the-wall question will tell us something we didn’t already know.
Last night, for example, John McCain was asked a straightforward question: Do you believe in evolution?
It’s the 21st century and McCain is an educated man, so it should have been a fairly easy one. But he’s a Republican, and he needs to appeal to a far-right base that has little use for modern science — so he hesitated. After a pregnant pause, McCain said, “Yes.”
The Politico’s Jim VandeHei opened it up to the stage. “I’m curious, is there anybody on the stage that does not agree — believe in evolution?”
The camera didn’t show the 10 candidates for very long, but three would-be presidents raised their hand: Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo.
First, this tells us that nearly one-in-three Republican presidential candidates reject modern biology. I’m trying to decide whether it’s bad news (that the number is so high) or good news (that more of these guys didn’t raise their hand).
Second, McCain’s straightforward answer was encouraging, but it was also inconsistent with some of his other recent comments on the subject.
In February, for example, ThinkProgress noted that McCain was the keynote speaker for the Discovery Institute, the most prominent creationism advocacy group in the country. At the time, he neglected to mention that he believes the group is wrong.
That’s possibly because he hadn’t yet decided how he’d come down on the question. Keep in mind, last summer, McCain appeared at an Aspen Institute discussion, where he tripped over himself trying to explain his position on science in science classes, saying intelligent design creationism does and does not belong in public schools. (A former McCain aide acknowledged, “[H]is heart isn’t in this stuff…. But he has to pretend [that it is], and he’s not a good enough actor to pull it off. He just can’t fake it well enough.”)
But he keeps trying anyway. As TP added, in 2005, McCain endorsed intelligent design creationism, a year later he said the opposite, and a few months later, he said both.
Last night, he finally gave a straight answer, which was good to hear — at least until he changes his mind again.
As for the bigger picture, I’m curious how the response to the question last night will affect the religious right. Will the base look askance at candidates who reject creationism? Will Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo get a second look because they reject modern biology?