The Rick Warren Political and Scientific Experiment
Tonight, the Saddleback Church had the opportunity to have their leader Rick Warren interview both Barack Obama and John McCain using the same exact questions. Barack Obama had an hour, and then John McCain had an hour after Obama, where he was hiding inside in a silent-room where he couldn’t hear how Barack Obama performed.
Right off the bat, I thought Barack Obama was able to evade some of the tough questions using unfair debating tactics such as changing the subject and it worked for him quite well. He never got boo’ed even with unpopular answers. He was also able to crack quite a few jokes and received plenty of applause. So it was definitely a good night for Barack Obama. It could have been much worse.
Barack Obama’s Answers
To the question about Justices, Barack Obama gave some good answers and was able to back them up nicely.
On the 3 wisest advisers question, Obama said his grandmother, his wife, and Senator Ted Kennedy. He explained that he liked some other Democratic senators in their experiences and foreign policy. It was a very weak response and I think he was trying to emphasize that he was a family man and a religious man.
On the Moral issue “gut-wrenching” decision, Obama thought for a while, stuttered a bit and then decided to talk about his teenage years experimenting with drugs and smoking and basically tried hard to escape the question.
On religion, Obama gave the expected response any politician would make with some religious references and his respect for Jesus and then tried to make some references to the Bible. I think that he thought some memorization of some quotes from the Bible would be enough to convince the Evangelists.
On Party-line reaching across the aisle, another failure for Barack Obama, he stuttered thought a moment then finally mentioned Public financing, what a big mistake that was considering he backed off of Public financing and hides his donor list from the public. However, considering he votes with the Democratic party 96% of the time, he had no other option, this question devastated him.
On flip-flopping, Obama sort of avoided the question.
On Taxes/define rich, Obama mentioned 250,000$ as the line in which he would begin to tax, saying that we all need to sacrifice for the greater good.
On “evil” Obama mentioned Darfur saying that evil exists there, and that he said evil exists in our “streets”. He didn’t quite answer the question and completely missed the cue that he should talk about foreign policy. He completely failed this question.
On teachers, Obama had a good answer.
Barack Obama’s Grade
Overall Barack Obama’s responses were good, backed up with his philosophy and vision. I’d give him a grade of B because while there was excessive stuttering and moments where he was stumped and tried to change the subject or play with words to sound as neutral as possible he still avoided any major gaffes and didn’t endanger himself except with the Homosexual voting bloc, which I’m sure will have repercussions.
He tried to sound neutral in many of the Democratic issues on religion, where he tried to make people believe that Abortion has decreased but kept his pro-choice, pro-stem-cell role. While switching position on Same-sex Marriage which will have repercussions.
John McCain’s Answers
On Justices, John McCain made some good arguments and backed them up well, and he received major applause for his choices.
On 3 wisest advisers, John McCain mentioned General Patraeus for his courage, intelligence, and leadership, The CEO of Ebay for leadership, economic principles, and success of capitalism. He talked about some political influences and was able to argue clearly and receptively to the audience and it gave him the opportunity to talk about the Iraq War and the success of the Surge in Iraq, which was a subject Obama avoids.
On Moral issue, McCain was quick to mention his unfortunate first marriage and then talked about his decision to stay in the Vietnamese prison when offered the freedom and explained why he chose to stay with his fellow soldiers.
On religion, McCain talked about his religious influences and quickly told his story of the Vietnamese POW Christmas and was given the appropriate applause.
On reaching across the aisle, McCain was able to gain political points and immediately mention some important resolutions where he crossed party lines to do what is right rather than what his party thinks.
On evil, McCain was quick to respond that he would want to defeat evil, declaring that he will continue to search for Bin Laden to bring him to justice. He talked about Radical Extremism in the Middle East that forced women with down-syndrome to use remote-controlled suicide vests. He won great applause for his concern for defeating evil in the world. He was also asked about what he would do about Darfur and Georgia and he was able to respond to that effectively.
On teachers, McCain immediately received applause for his answer and explained his position well. He said he wanted to give the choice to everyone to choose their schools. He also had the opportunity to talk about New Orleans and the tragedy and subsequent success there.
On flip-flopping, McCain talked about his change in position for off-shore drilling and had the opportunity to explain his energy plan.
On Taxes/define rich, McCain said that it wasn’t important in defining who’s rich because he wouldn’t raise taxes for anyone and made Rick Warren laugh hard in mentioning that the exact number could be defined as “5,000,000″ as a joke. He properly explained that spending is the problem and that he is trying to combat that. He said raising taxes is not the solution, but solving earmarking problems and government spending need to be stopped. He even had the opportunity to talk about giving tax credits for Health Insurance a subject that was ignored by Obama surprisingly, and tax credits for middle class families.
John McCain’s Grade
John McCain has earned an excellent grade A. He answered the questions perfectly as anyone could. He made no mistakes and was emotional in his stories and anecdotes that deeply affected the audience.
Who won?
Most political analyst will tell you that this was John McCain’s victory. Political analysts will also mention that Barack Obama did pretty well too and did not have any major mistakes but there is no way that he will be able to take away the evangelical votes with the great performance by John McCain. Considering the worst-case scenarios, Barack Obama could have done a lot worse, possibly even get boo’ed off the stage which would have fatally harmed his campaign.
I don’t side with McCain on everything he said over Obama on everything he said, but I think polls will show Obama as having performed weaker than analysts are saying.
I’m not against discussing the many sides of any issue and finding detail and nuance in it; but you need to have a point to what you’re saying, while it looked like Obama was merely trying to hedge himself, in some cases leading him to get lost. For instance, its fine that Obama respects other people’s views on abortion, but he confused the belief that life starts at conception with opposition to him on exceptions for partial birth abortions—which is based on the question of how broadly the woman’s health is defined. Way too often Obama was just getting lost and avoiding connecting his points in any meaningful way.
He also avoided answering the direct question on stem cell research, which was about how the issue of embryonic stem cells was now moot since scientists now can create pluri-potent stem cells, adapting adult stem cells to act like embryonic stem cells.
The worst case of this was Obama’s answer on Supreme Court Justices. While analysists may understand the reason for his answers for each justice, his answers to me sounded completely unacceptable, because he made himself sound as if he wouldn’t appoint them just because he disagreed with him; while the big problem in politics today is that we’re afraid the court will be influenced by politics. From that perspective, his position on Scalia sounded blatantly partisan, his position on Roberts would have been fine if he specifically cited that as judicial activism, and his position on Thomas was okay, except that in the combination with the other two answers, since Thomas is a conservative, it seemed partisan also. Of course, McCain’s choices were partisan also, but his rationale wasn’t.
This isn’t at all to say that I’m a cheerleader for McCain, because I think some of his answers were too simplistic. But the antidote to simplicity isn’t hedging and incoherency.
I guess Democrats don’t care all that much about church and state now do they.
This was definitely McCains night. Hands Down! Obama proved what we knew for awhile now. Away from a teleprompter, he is as inept at speaking as G.W. Bush.
It’s not about church and state and it’s not about their separation.
The simple fact is, that Democrats just don’t appeal to the religious, because their views are more in line with Social Reform and Liberalism. The whole idea of Obama trying to go and pander to the Evangelists simply damaged his campaign.
John Mcain seemed more relaxed, more clear and direct in his answers.
I think John McCain should try to set up a format just like this, with the NAACP, and he would be successful in reaching out to minority communities in talking about issues like school choice
Also, to those who have doubts about McCain’s victory, please note that I believed that Dick Cheney lost to John Edwards in the Vice presidential debate, even though almost all political analysts claim that Dick Cheney won. So understand that I am not trying to promote a pro-Bush or pro-Republican agenda.
I think John McCain should simply continue to ask Barack Obama through the media to debate together. In a debate John McCain could really prove himself worthy as a uniter.
McCain should hopefully release some ads about Barack Obama’s "my pay grade isn’t high enough to judge abortion" comment.
Jonathan,
I’m not sure if I posted the URL here, but a Rasmussen Reports poll showed that if only white people were voting, McCain would win by 13%. Thats why I think if there were any helpful way for McCain to reach out to minorities it could give him a heavy advantage. Given that when McCain spoke at the NAACP he got heavy applause when mentioning school choice, I think a format like this in that setting would be helpful to his campaign.
McCain said "Are we going to get back to the importance of Supreme Court judges, or should I…." Warren said "No, we’re going to get back to that."
But McCain and Warren had not yet talked about that – although Obama and Warren had. Either McCain knew the questions in advance or he listened in on Obama’s answers.
Point being – if the Dem’s wanted to appear that they believed their own so-called stances of separation of Church and State than Obama would not have taken part of a Q&A for Presidential Candidates about faith in any shape or form. Instead they showed yet more hypocrisy and pandering.
You’re absolutely right, but they are desperate.
Absolutely wrong, because he didn’t say "are we getting back" he said "can we get to the Justices as it is related" and he wouldn’t have mentioned it if it wasn’t an important subject related to the issue at hand. McCain did not know the questions in advance or listen in on Obama, that’s really low of you to think that way.
Although, liberals think of Republicans as evil crazy people and see George W. Bush as Dr. Evil trying to conquer the world for oil and destroy the economy for corporations, so it’s no surprise for you to say this.
The fact that oil in Iraq is being used for Iraq, proves Liberals wrong on that issue, and the fact that unemployment rate has been steady at 5% since 1994 and the economy isn’t that bad proves liberals wrong on that as well.
admin: cut-and-paste spam deleted
I cannot vote for anyone who is going to legalize abortion. So I must vote for McCain.
Hillary your statistics are wrong.
When Abortion decreases crime rate and poverty goes up, if and only if, governments don’t make up for it using social programs, funding of religious organizations that will help in orphanages and other social services, and money spent on preventing unwanted pregnancies and education for pregnancies in the first place.
Now, I am voting for John McCain unless something changes. However, I am pro-choice. But I’d rather vote for John McCain than someone who thinks that there are 57 states and stutters all the time like George W.
Since Roe v Wade, the whole abortion-poverty rate relationship has not been used at all in America.
And there is no statistic that says poverty increases when Republicans are in power. It’s just an assumption created by Liberal Media Agencies.
I am wondering when anti-Obama critics will tire of using this misrepresentation. Obama does not think there are 57 states any more than McCain thinks that Iraq borders Afghanistan. Both of examples of unintentional mis-statements by the candidates taken out-of-context by their critics for purposes of making the candidates look bad without having to, you know, actually think or argue substantively about anything.
On the plus side, it does give comfort to the half of me that supports Obama to know that his critics are unable to muster anything more substantive than trivia based on months-old misrepresentations. But it depresses my pro-McCain half to think that so many of his supporters have nothing more than trivia based on months-old misrepresentations to use on their candidate’s behalf.
In my opinion after months of seeing this kind of tripe dominate the blogosphere, the opportunity for a real election based on substantively competing philosophies is being squandered by intellectually lazy supporters on both sides who seem incapable of any level of analysis more sophisticated than simply regurgitating the same old half-honest one-liners over and over and over and over and over and over.
"Obama does not think there are 57 states any more than McCain thinks that Iraq borders Afghanistan."
Confusing foreign borders at Age 71 is one thing. Confusing the number of states at age 47 as an American candidate running for the highest office makes me worry.
There is nothing to muster because Jason, Obama has no past. He’s a nobody. He’s a celebrity that has no history, nothing significant in his voting record, nothing noteworthy in his career. No experience. Constant flip-flops and constant mistakes.
I mean I don’t have to just mention 57 states, I mean I know McCain has messed up 2-3 times. However, I can name you about 15 times that Barack Obama has made a gaffe, that’s a SIGNIFICANT difference no matter how much you deny it.
McCain has a significant history, he’s a war hero, he has studied history, he understands foreign policy because we know from his statements how well he has gotten to know the world through so many years in the senate. We know that he has always done whatever it takes to help the nation, because he has even crossed his own party at times to do what he thought was right. This is something that far surpasses Barack Obama’s 96% liberal party vote and his short 3 years in the Senate.
Barack Obama has a big life ahead of him, he probably will be able to run multiple times again and again, but for him to have the audacity to run against McCain and Hillary was just absurd. So far he’s been running off of luck, lots of donations and the help he gets from the media and from the internet.
And I take offense that you think I regurgitate what others have said, there is a lot of stuff I’ve said that were completely new in my other articles.
Then drop the "57 states" style of trivial nonsense and stick to the original analysis and you’ll find me much less critical even when I might disagree with you.
admin: comment removed IAW comments policy
So he has no history or record BUT he has a history of flip-flops and mistakes? If you’re going to choose something to hold against him (lets never mind I disagree) I suggest that it isn’t contradictory.
Jonathan, I know I’ve said this before, but I will say it again. It is unwise to presume that anyone who isn’t stupid agrees with your views. You know (or you should) that not all political analysts will agree with you, they never agree on anything! That may make them wrong, in your view, but that does not make them stupid. Denigrating other opinions as stupid is part of what has polarized the country to such a large degree and it is part of the problem, not the solution.