McCain & Obama at the Saddleback Forum

Saturday night, Pastor Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life," hosted a forum at Saddleback Church in which he interviewed both Barack Obama and John McCain, whom he both refers to as friends.

It seems like McCain is pulling the same wool over the eyes of Christians that his good buddy Bush did. “Oh I’m pro-life” yet pro-death in Iraq. “I believe life begins at conception” then ends at 18 when I send you to die for oil, or bomb you to pieces. Obama’s answer on abortion, like many answers, were too nuanced and in depth for the typical right-wing Christian. They want to hear things dumbed down like “bomb bomb evil, USA! USA! WAR HERO!” Obama’s answers were more based on the holistic message of the Bible, unlike McCain’s 1 or 2 issues that right wing Bible-shredding Christians have decided to dilute the Bible to.

Twice McCain had a chance to take a stand against discrimination (marriage question and faith-based charities question) and twice he fell flat on his face. He tried to act like he was giving straight answers, but constantly danced around issues, like the one about defining rich, because it seems he panders to the wealthy elite in this country. More wealthy CEO's and big oil companies donate to McCain, while more US soldiers and almost 2 million people have donated to Obama. That says a lot. When asked about his greatest moral failing, McCain replied "the failure of my first marriage," hoping to dance around the issue of his adultery of cheating on his first wife while she was crippled and suffering from a sever car accident. Obviously, his involvement in the Keating Five Scandal wasn't mentioned.

I thought McCain’s performance was disappointing. Pretty much heard nothing more from him than “War hero, war hero, warmongering, warmongering.”

When asked does evil exist and what should we do about it? McCain immediately replied “Defeat it.” Wow, I’m so glad he’s the smug arbiter of all that is good and evil. Good job at defeating around 90,000 “evil” innocent civilians in Iraq. Good job at defeating some poor farmers and peasants with napalm in Vietnam.

Here's another interesting take, from SSP forumer aaron38:

Now granted I'm biased, but what I heard was Obama having a discussion on how he approaches an issue, examines both sides and reaches a decision and not always the easy one. McCain on the other hand seemed flippant. He was talking to a church, but came out like he was on a talkshow, cracking jokes and giving a stump speech.

I wonder how McCain's answer of "Defeat Evil" flies with evangelicals? Is McCain single handedly going to cast out Satan? Because short of that, evil isn't going anywhere. It's the same thing as everything Bush has done. Have a war on a tactic. You can't have a war on terrorism, and you can't have a war on evil. Yet, that's the road McCain would take us down. He'd send out our troops to die in a war against evil that can't ever be won.

But to expand on my view, last night I saw Obama working middle of the road voters, and McCain was far right, shoring up his base. That McCain is still trying to keep his base from staying home isn't a good sign for him, and I don't see what new voters he pulled in.