{"id":16617,"date":"2008-08-17T08:25:53","date_gmt":"2008-08-17T12:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16583.html"},"modified":"2008-08-17T08:25:53","modified_gmt":"2008-08-17T12:25:53","slug":"back-to-back-at-saddleback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/back-to-back-at-saddleback\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to back at Saddleback"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first blush, the setting seemed unfavorable to both Barack Obama and<\/i> John McCain — an evangelical megachurch hosting the first major candidate forum of the presidential campaign. <\/p>\n

For Obama, the goal was to impress a largely-skeptical audience of conservative evangelicals that he is a man of strong values and Christian faith, and that there are areas of common ground between them. For McCain, the goal was to remind the evangelical audience that they’re really on the same page when it comes to social issues, notwithstanding his denunciation of the religious right eight years ago.<\/p>\n

What we saw last night from the Rev. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church was both candidates doing what they set out to do. It was a success for Obama and McCain, for entirely different reasons.<\/p>\n

Obama, arguably, had the tougher task, winning over a largely-conservative evangelical audience in the Republican stronghold of Orange County. Granted, Saddleback isn’t as hard-line as say, the chapel at Regent University, but only in that Warren has expanded the repertoire of “Christian issues” — his church opposes gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research, but it’s also concerned about Darfur, war, poverty, and the environment.<\/p>\n

We saw pretty quickly that Obama’s years of working in churches left him exceedingly comfortable talking to a pastor about issues in a spiritual context. Salon’s Mike Madden noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One of the candidates for president strolled onto the stage at a massive megachurch in suburban Orange County Saturday night and started joking easily with the Rev. Rick Warren, maybe the most popular evangelical leader in America — but just plain “Pastor Rick” to the candidate. He talked about his certainty that “Jesus Christ died for my sins, and I am redeemed through him,” said Americans should be soldiers in the fight against evil and defined marriage as between a man and a woman — “and God is in the mix.” This particular Christian candidate was so on his game that after a segment on domestic policy ended, Warren told him — his mic still live as the TV feed cut to commercial — “Home run.”<\/p>\n

Oh, and John McCain was there, too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What about the social issues? I thought Obama did a nice job of threading the needle — he didn’t back away from what are ostensibly liberal positions, describing himself as pro-choice and expressing his support for civil unions, but characterized them in ways that sound palatable by an evangelical audience, such an emphasis on preventing unwanted pregnancies.<\/p>\n

But by any reasonable measure, McCain had a very good night, too.
\n
\nI heard from quite a few people who seemed surprised that McCain seemed so comfortable and articulate. It’s probably a good time to remind those of us who hope McCain loses in November how very good McCain is in these settings. McCain is about as comfortable doing a Q&A as Michael Phelps is in the water.<\/p>\n

McCain runs into a quite a bit of trouble as a candidate when he has to talk about policy details and specifics, which generally leaves him sounding incoherent and confused. But last night was the polar opposite — a relaxed setting with a friendly audience in one of the most-reliably Republican areas in the county <\/p>\n

ohne-rezeptkaufen.com<\/a><\/div>\n

, talking to a pastor who had no interest in “gotcha” questions, asking tough ones like, “When does life begin?” (McCain’s answer, “At the moment of conception,” was what Warren and the audience wanted to hear.)<\/p>\n

Most of the analysis I’ve seen concluded that McCain “won” the night. Perhaps. He certainly excelled in making the forum a typical campaign event, telling the same jokes we’ve heard a million times, repeating lines from his stump speech verbatim, relating every question to either a) his prepared campaign talking points (biggest reversal? coastal drilling, natch); or b) his background as a P.O.W. in Vietnam. McCain scored by telling the audience precisely what it wanted to hear on everything from marriage to vouchers to unions.<\/p>\n

Watching the event, I made a note after Obama was done: “thoughtful leader.” When McCain wrapped up, I wrote: “skilled politician.”<\/p>\n

It wasn’t really a level playing field, though. Obama had to try to win over evangelicals, while McCain had to keep them. With that in mind, Noam Scheiber recommends<\/a> grading on a curve.<\/p>\n

I just saw CBN’s David Brody proclaim McCain the winner of tonight’s joint appearance at Saddleback Church, saying (essentially) that McCain hit it out of the park. I didn’t think McCain did as well as Brody did–a lot of his answers sounded pretty stilted and canned, like obviously recycled stump shtick. But, even if you did think McCain was objectively better than Obama, that’s the wrong way to think about winners and losers in a forum like this. You’ve got to grade on the curve.<\/p>\n

The audience, after all, was primarily evangelical Christians–a group among whom McCain leads by better than 2 to 1, according to recent polls. That means that if McCain did any worse than twice as well as Obama, it counts as a win for Obama. And, from where I sit, McCain didn’t come close to doing twice as well. My sense is that Obama struck a lot of previously skeptical evangelicals as a reasonable and God-fearing man (a real achievement given that so many of the questions touched on issues that favor Republicans among these voters–abortion, judges, stem cell research, etc.). That’s a big improvement in light of where Obama started.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Realistically, I’m not sure how much last night mattered. A two-hour event, up against the Olympics, on a Saturday night in August — not exactly a recipe for a ratings bonanza.<\/p>\n

That said, I suspect both candidates left feeling pretty good about their performances. What’d you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first blush, the setting seemed unfavorable to both Barack Obama and John McCain — an evangelical megachurch hosting the first major candidate forum of the presidential campaign. For Obama, the goal was to impress a largely-skeptical audience of conservative evangelicals that he is a man of strong values and Christian faith, and that there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}