5 Thoughts on the Saddleback Church Forum

After watching Saturday night’s sort-of debate (an interview is more accurate) hosted by Pastor Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, a few thoughts jumped out at me.  I believe this was one of the most significant nights of the entire Presidential campaign and will be increasingly viewed as important as time goes on.

1.  First, the immediate “controversy”.  On Meet the Press Sunday morning, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News claimed that some members of the Obama campaign were “whispering” around that McCain was not placed inside a “cone of silence” that he was reputed to be placed in while Obama took questions first.  A story from the New York Times states as fact this very claim.  The story also gives a misleading impression that Rick Warren didn’t know where McCain was while Obama was being questioned.  Rick Warren relayed his take in an interview with beliefnet.com, where he unequivocally denied that McCain had any access to the questions beforehand.  He said on Hannity and Colmes that to believe this would be to doubt the integrity of the Secret Service, his security service, and the McCain campaign.

This all sounds like an attempt by the Obama campaign, using their media surrogates, to discredit McCain’s exemplary performance in the forum.  If the Obama campaign actually knew that McCain knew the questions in advance, then you could expect them to be publicly outraged at this.  Instead, the Obama campaign has issued no statement about the matter.  The strategy for them was to get their friends in the media, namely left-leaning reporters like Andrea Mitchell and well established liberal papers like the New York Times, to start a campaign to discredit the results of the debate.  The goal is to make the left-wing talking point for this debate to be “McCain cheated” so it can be dismissed.  To challenge the integrity of Rick Warren, who wrote one of the best selling books in history and is perhaps the most respected religious leader in America, would be a huge misstep for the Obama campaign.  So the Obama campaign will not directly attack the forum.  Instead, they will use their media friends to do so.  We must forthrightly speak against this.

2.  I think all of the talk of evangelicals being up for grabs can be put to rest after this forum.  McCain gave his best performance of his entire campaign on Saturday night.  He really opened the eyes of those who were grudgingly supporting him before.  His tone was precisely right and revealed a side to him that was silent previously.  There was a narrative being developed that evangelicals were increasingly open to the Democratic Party after some disappointments with the Bush administration.  What this will turn out to be is intra-coalition grumbling akin to fiscal conservatives complaining about excessive spending.  There may be some discontent with the Republican Party among evangelicals, but that doesn’t mean that they will turn to the Democratic Party.  A recent poll showed McCain’s standing with evangelicals to be almost identical to Bush’s in 2004 at this time.  McCain’s performance with white evangelicals will almost assuredly be within a few points of Bush’s haul.

3.  It was a great format.  It was so refreshing to see a platform where candidates are not hectored by gotcha questions, 30 second (or less) time limits to questions, or moderators with ulterior agendas.  It would be hard to replicate this format in the future because there is something to be said for having both candidates on stage at the same time.  But I think that this format can be emulated in its more conversational tone and its lack of hard time limits.  The idea for debate reform proposed by Newt Gingrich and Mario Cuomo would be the model for a better series of debates.

4.  This will come as a shock to the conventional wisdom, but come debate season, McCain will be shown to clearly be a better debater.  To be as objective as possible, Obama is incredibly gifted at delivering prepared remarks.  I can’t think of a current politician who is a better speech giver.  He would be my pick to give a PowerPoint presentation for me.  But, he is not that good at thinking on his feet.  He has the tendency to hem and haw a lot when he is thinking.  At first, this appears thoughtful, but after repeated viewing, it becomes rather tedious.  He also has made plenty of gaffes while he had to think off the top of his head (think of the “clinging” comments, or his 57 states remark).  On the other hand, McCain is the master of conversational politics.  McCain is as good in town hall situations as Obama is giving a big speech.  McCain was the most consistent of all the Republican contestants in the primary’s never ending series of debates.  He is much better at thinking on his feet than Obama.  Don’t be shocked when McCain surprises America in October.

5.  Don’t underestimate McCain.  For a few months, many have been acting as if Obama had the election won already.  It was assumed that Republicans were so unpopular that no Republican candidate could win the Presidency.  While Republicans will likely lose seats in Congress this election, the Presidential race appears to be 50-50.  Obama is a weaker Democratic candidate than usual while McCain is the single strongest candidate that Republicans could have nominated.  I have a feeling that if Obama doesn’t have a 5 point lead a few weeks in advance, then McCain will win.  Obama has presented himself as the change candidate.  It will take many voters willing to take a bigger risk for Obama to win.  Considering the electoral environment this year, this is a very real possibility.  But the longer McCain hangs around, the stronger he will become.  McCain was already left for dead last summer.  I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.