This started out as a comment to hopefully disagree without being disagreeable with johnson springs on Matt Moon's post Obama's Conversation With Himself, McCain's Conversation With America. I became so fired up in my response that I started bloviating to the tune of about a thousand-word essay, so I decided to be kind to Matt's readers and simply make it a separate post.
Johnson springs critiqued Matt's post as good "naive" analysis; poor political analysis. My understanding of political success is being able to engineer consensus which will produce votes on election day which will, in turn, produce victory for the candidate. I thought Matt's analysis was spot-on.
As an amateur student of neuro-linguistic programming and body language, I can say that it's well-documented that this forum was not a draw. To determine that, I analyzed the body language along with the spoken responses. The first sign of insecurity was that Obama was conversing with Pastor Warren, whereas McCain, as Matt pointed out, was conversing with us. The second sign of Barack Obama going south, literally, was when he frequently cast his gaze downward. In body language parlance, Gaze-down may convey a defeated attitude. It may also reflect guilt, shame, or submissiveness, as when distorting the truth or telling a lie. No wonder George Clooney keeps texting and calling Obama weekly with "public speaking tips" (as opposed to foreign policy advice). In addition to practicing what can be interpreted by the trained eye as deception, I've often said that if Obama were giving at speech at Toastmaster's and were charged $5 for every "um" and "uh", the tip jar would profit greatly.
When I hear people refer to him as an "academic" or "professorial", all I can think of is that if he were my professor, I'd drop his class in Week One. In my humble opinion, the man is somewhat boring, indecisive and poorly informed. Take his statement that "abortions have not gone down at all in the past 8 years", for example. Apparently he's not an avid reader of U.S. News and World Report, which informed us in January of this year that Abortion Rate Falls to Its Lowest Level in Decades. We can add that to his "57 states" misstep along with all of his other gaffes. Maybe my bar's a little higher than some, but I do require my professors to be more knowledgeable than I am, not less so.
My theory is that anyone who believes this forum was a draw was either (a) multitasking by watching both Michael Phelps kick ass for his impossibly incredible lucky #8 gold medal (AMERICA - HELL YEAH!!), (b) an Obama fan, (c) an anti-McCain conservative, (d) simply not observing or comprehending fully the signs, signals and responses of the audience objectively, or possibly any combination or all of the above.
The number of times the audience applauded, and the enthusiasm of the applause were visibly higher for McCain throughout his interview, and undeniably moreso in the areas of "At what point do babies have human rights?", "Does evil exist and what should we do about it?", and "What was the most difficult decision you ever made in your life and what was your process?". The major significator of the entire evening was at the completion of each candidate's interview. When Obama completed his round, several people stood up around the church, and Pastor Warren invited everyone to stand and thank Senator Obama for his participation. It appeared to me as though he didn't want half the church standing and the other half still in their seats. It took from 10-30 seconds for everyone to stand respectfully on behalf of Senator Obama. On the other hand, when John McCain completed his round, the entire audience jumped to their feet immediately to roaring applause, even before Rick Warren invited them to do so. That's decisive. That's definitive. That's a measurement of a win, not a draw. Please feel free to go back and review it again and fact-check me.
If you're a conservative or evangelical who is still on the fence after watching McCain's stellar performance and the amazing wealth of enthusiasm which was generated with an audience that could have gone either way last night, and you still want to stay home or write in Ronald Reagan's name, then I'd like you to closely examine whether you've become caught up in a political ideological purity test that is impossible for anyone to pass except perhaps the great man Reagan himself, and even that is up for grabs, given all the requirements he'd have to live up to today.
If you're either an ongoing or a newly minted McCain supporter, you'll be as happy as the day is long with McCain's outstanding performance last night and its embrace by the Saddleback Church, and I'd like to encourage you to do exactly as Matt recommended, and as I just did, which is to go to johnmccain.com and contribute.
