August 18, 2008

8/18: Back In The Saddle

Political bloggers are discussing John McCain and Barack Obama's respective interviews with mega-pastor Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church in CA. Liberal bloggers believe that Obama and McCain both gave successful performances, although some lefty bloggers aren't convinced that Obama's evangelical outreach will pay off on Election Day. Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, are convinced that McCain was the night's clear winner and that he did a better job of connecting with the audience. The American Spectator's Philip Klein echoes the sentiments of many conservative bloggers when he writes: "All I can say is that Barack Obama will have his work cut out for him in this fall's debates if this is at all an indication of how the two of them perform on the same stage."

SADDLEBACK: Mutually Beneficial?

Most liberal bloggers felt that Obama and McCain both gave successful performances at Warren's forum:

• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "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. 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."
• The New Republic's Noam Scheiber: "The audience [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. Advantage Obama."
• MyDD's Transplanted Texan: "I think both [candidates] had a positive performance. Obama's was better, and probably more tailored to the specific audience. It certainly didn't seem forced. However, given that this is an audience likely leaning towards McCain to begin with, Obama may have allayed some fears, but I don't think he overcame the gap. In short, he won a non-event."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "For better or worse, Obama seems to have chosen to treat this event as sort of an intimate evening with Rick Warren -- that just happened to be nationally televised. McCain, by contrast, treated it as a straight campaign event: he had his stump speech talking points ready, and he was eager to cram as many of them into his 50 minutes as possible. I don't know if this was a good decision on Obama's part, but I don't have any doubt that he'll choose a much more direct speaking style at his three face-to-face debates with McCain."
• Crooks and Liars' John Amato: "Obama tried to be thoughtful in all his responses[;] some people say he takes too long to answer, but I think he's just trying to think before he responds. In the debates he will have to be quick on the draw and powerful, but he looked comfortable and sincere. [...] McCain is very good in these intimate settings. Put him on SNL or Jay Leno and he does very well. That's something that shouldn't be taken lightly by us or the Obama camp."

Several liberal bloggers are skeptical about Obama's efforts to reach out to evangelical Christians:

• digby: "The Saddleback congregation applauded Obama very nicely. But as I hear this (California!) evangelical audience cheering McCain far more wildly for everything from offshore drilling to gay marriage to taxes and clapping for every tired old stump line like it's the first time he's said them, I really have to wonder whether this 'outreach' is going to add up to anything. I know it's a small sample, but as Warren points out, social conservatism is not just about religion, it's a 'worldview' and McCain is the one who shares it, not Obama."
• Firedoglake's Teddy Partridge: "Senator Obama, I hope you learned something yesterday on the Saddleback Church/Store stage. The thoughtful, considered answers you craft in hopes of sharing your faith with the greedy prosperity-Xtians aren't going to sway them. John McCain's angry snappish answers -- his rigidity, his soundbiteiness, his 'clarity' -- provoked rabid applause. Your cautious conversational style as you tried to reveal what moves you and how your faith manifests itself: not so gripping."

SADDLEBACK II: ...Or A Home Run For The Mac?

Most conservative bloggers felt that McCain was the clear winner:

• Commentary's John Podhoretz: "I don't know how to say this more clearly: If John McCain can perform during the three debates the way he is performing tonight with Rick Warren, he will win this election. The contrast between him and Barack Obama (who answered the same questions an hour before him) has really been quite startling."
• NRO's Mark Hemingway: "I don't want to get to overheated about what occurred tonight, but I do think McCain had a clear and decisive victory over Obama. It all comes down to something that Phil Bredesen, the Democratic governor of Tennessee recently said about Obama: 'Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.' By that standard, McCain did extremely well and Obama did very poorly."
• NRO's Byron York: "It was clear that McCain was the [crowd] favorite. That was hardly a surprise; at a small gathering I attended a few years ago, someone asked Warren how many of his parishioners voted for John Kerry. He thought for a moment and said 15 percent. So the conservative Saddleback crowd, while happy to see Obama in their midst, was not going to be on his side. What they wanted was proof that John McCain was on theirs, and that's what they got."
• AmSpec Blog's Klein: "All I can say is that Barack Obama will have his work cut out for him in this fall's debates if this is at all an indication of how the two of them perform on the same stage. McCain was really at his best and the contrast played to his strengths. Obama was long-winded and wishy-washy in his answers, while McCain was short and to the point -- Rick Warren even had to ask him additional questions because he finished them so much more quickly than Obama. [...] If this were an actual debate, it would have been a blowout. Obama looked every bit like the rookie against a seasoned (not washed-up) veteran."
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "I agree that McCain did better than Obama. Obama's greenness occasionally showed and it is clear that the two candidates can't really compare in life stories, even if Obama does a better job of writing about his. McCain was more effective at connecting with the audience and displaying his sense of humor."
• NRO's Rich Lowry: "In the first fifteen minutes, McCain had established a moral seriousness stemming from his conduct in Vietnam as a POW and his long-time as a national leader that Obama can't match. Throughout the rest of the night, he brought up Iraq, al Qaeda, and the Georgia crisis, when Obama was more inward-looking. McCain sounded like a potential commander-in-chief, Obama more like a potential friend. [...] As for the social issues, tonight should throw a damper on the notion that Obama is going to make major inroads among evangelicals voters. Why would they vote for his social liberalism couched in exquisite equivocations, when they can vote for someone who agrees with them on most everything like John McCain?"

SADDLEBACK III: The Abortion Question

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama's response to Warren's question about abortion. When Warren asked him "at what point does a baby get human rights," Obama began his response by saying that "answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade." Conservative bloggers are slamming Obama for his response:

• RedState's Feddie: "Barack Obama refuses to address the defining civil-rights issue of our time."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "As President -- even as Senator -- Obama is expected to have an answer for this. Quite literally, there is no higher pay grade in the US government, and abortion is one of the issues he has to face. If he can't face it, then he should go back to community organization and leave politics for people who can. John McCain had no trouble answering the same question. Obama dodged it -- and for good reason: his answer would have exposed his radical views."
• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "At Saddleback Barack Obama responded to the question addressed to him by Rick Warren on abortion as being 'above my pay grade.' Those who have dug into his record in the Illinois senate, however, have found evidence that Obama is a devout believer in what might be called the sacramental or positive good view of abortion: nothing can be allowed to interfere with the unfettered exercise of the purported right, including the accident of an infant born alive."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "The consensus on yesterday's forum at Saddleback Valley Community Church is that Senator McCain had an exceptional night, that Rick Warren pulled off a very difficult job, and that Senator Obama was smooth as usual except for his 'above my pay grade' gaffe, which is one of those phrases that will stick and hurt."

SADDLEBACK IV: Did You Know That John McCain Is A Former Prisoner Of War?

Several liberal bloggers were upset to learn that "despite assurances, McCain wasn't in a 'Cone of Silence'" during Obama's interview with Warren (which took place before McCain's). They believe that McCain could have easily listened to a broadcast of the questions that Warren asked Obama, which would have given him an advantage over his rival. Liberal bloggers were further upset by the McCain camp's response to these allegations, which referenced his POW experience:

"Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions.

'The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,' Ms. Wallace said."

• digby: "Well ok then. The man is incapable of cheating because he was a POW. We shall hear no more about it. (Of course his first wife and the shareholders in the Lincoln Savings and Loan might disagree, but far be it for me to bring that up.)"
• Mark Kleiman: "The notion that McCain's suffering as a POW guarantees his honesty in all transactions for the rest of his life would have to improve a lot to be ridiculous. There is simply no logical connection I can imagine between former-prisoner status and honesty. In fact, we know that McCain has cheated on many occasions, starting with cheating on his wheelchair-bound first wife with a string of girlfriends, the richest of whom became his second wife."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Wow. Yes let's talk about outrageous. Using McCain's prisoner of war status to now claim that he can never be called on a lie? To suggest that former POWs don't lie about anything, so don't you dare ask them? That is simply a bizarre thing to reference, McCain's POW days, when asked whether McCain was prepped for a debate. It feels awfully desperate. And a little bit crass too."
• Ezra Klein: "What's mainly impressive here is the versatility of the defense. 'The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, burnt the toast is outrageous.' 'The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, thinks Val Kilmer was the best Batman is outrageous.' 'The insinuation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, would cynically leverage his POW status for political gain is outrageous.'"

Firedoglake's Attaturk: "[This] is all part of a pattern. When called out for a factual error in something so trivial yet memorable as using dominant pro football teams of an era to patronize he uses the POW card. He uses the POW Card to push his Cuba policy. He uses the POW Card to get a forty year old dig in at hippies. He has used the POW card to say he isn't a racist, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. He has used the POW card to excuse years of voting against issues supporting veterans. He just used the POW experience again to apparently plagiarize Solzhenitsyn (classy, the guy just died). But then again, how dare I accuse John McCain of this, he was a war hero. Only Democrats with three purple hearts, a bronze star and a silver star, and who actually had to kill a man in personal combat are worthy of being called deceitful or wimps."

SADDLEBACK V: Sour Grapes, Anyone?

Conservative bloggers are pushing back fiercely against allegations that McCain heard some of Warren's questions beforehand, and they are criticizing NBC's Andrea Mitchell and the New York Times' Katharine Seelye for reporting on the controversy:

• Michelle Malkin: "The Obama camp and its media water-carriers are seriously accusing John McCain of 'cheating' in his appearance over the weekend at Rick Warren's Saddleback church forum because he was in his motorcade when the program started -- and then escorted to an empty room without media hook-ups. NBC's Andrea Mitchell spread the unsubstantiated rumor that somehow McCain heard Obama's questions while on his drive. The nutroots went, well, nuts. The NYTimes piled on ('Despite Assurances, McCain Wasn't In a "Cone of Silence"'). The McCain camp has protested. And now we have the spectacle of the Democrat presidential nominee and his press entourage bleating about the 'cone of silence' because he didn't fare as well as his opponent. [...] I think we know where the Left is headed again. Remember 'Is Bush Wired?'"
• Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "I understand the Obama people are mad. But if they are going to accuse McCain of cheating to members of the media, they'd better dang well have some proof. I don't lay blame on petty staffers, though. I expect them to gripe after a bad performance by their boss. I don't expect their whining to be legitimately reported without any skepticism. So my question is this: is it fair for Andrea Mitchell to 'put out' what the Obama people are saying privately, true or not?"
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Remember back in 2004 when George Bush trounced John Kerry in the debates? The left saw a funny shape under Bush's jacket and immediately decided Bush must have had answered piped to an earpiece from Karl Rove. That was the only way he could have done so well. A variation on that happened over the weekend. Andrea Mitchell and NBC are in full cover mode for the Obama campaign to undo Obama's self-inflicted damage. [...] The New York Times too is pushing the 'McCain knew the questions' story. It is the only way they can explain how well McCain did and how poorly Obama did."

Hot Air's Allahpundit is annoyed that people are having this argument in the first place: "It's exceptionally stupid of [McCain] not to have arrived on time and observed the terms about isolation knowing what the left would do with it. Michael Crowley at TNR is right that he's not the type to cheat, but, er, a good way to prove that you're not the type to cheat is to actually follow the rules you've agreed to. McCain seems to have assumed people would give him the benefit of the doubt simply because he's McCain, a show of mind-boggling naivete in the middle of an election. [...] So another home run ends up with an asterisk next to it."

MCCAIN: Young And Sweet, Only 72

Several liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain for bringing up his POW experience while answering a question about his taste in music:

"Speaking to Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute in Colorado on Thursday, McCain found himself explaining a recent interview with Blender Magazine in which he selected ABBA's 1976 track 'Dancing Queen' as his favorite song.

'What were you thinking?,' Isaacson asked him, looking incredulous.

'If there is anything I am lacking in, I've got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,' McCain joked. 'I've got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.'"

• Yglesias: "Yes, yes, we get it -- John McCain is so famously reluctant to discuss his POW experience or exploit it for political gain that he manages to bring it up in the context of wildly unrelated questions about his affection for 1970s-era Scandinavian pop acts."
• Firedoglake's Spencer Ackerman: "What? McCain was shot down in 1967. ABBA began making music in 1972. Don't try this shit on me, McCain! Your POW experience has nothing to do with your Partridgey musical taste."
• hilzoy: "We must never, ever forget that John McCain is reluctant to speak about his military service and his heroic war record. As he himself has said, 'I apologize for maybe being a little reluctant because I really believed that I served in the company of heroes.' He only discusses it when he has absolutely no alternative. [...] To see Blender Magazine heartlessly sweeping aside McCain's protestations and dragging his most private, closely-guarded secrets out into the spotlight like that -- it just tears at your heart, doesn't it?"

MCCAIN II: Coincidence?

In other news related to McCain's POW experience, liberal bloggers are buzzing about Daily Kos diarist rickrocket's suggestion that McCain's anecdote about his secretly Christian prison guard was modeled after a story told by Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

• Ezra Klein: "It's quite a coincidence. A couple bloggers have started looking for some further evidence that this story actually happened to McCain. When he returned from captivity, McCain wrote a 12,000 word memoir for US News and World Report. The role of religion is emphasized, and the rare glimpses of humanity in his captors is detailed. The story of the guard and the cross is notably absent. In 1974, McCain is invited by Ronald Reagan to a prayer breakfast. He tells a powerful story about the sustenance he found when spirituality crept in the cracks of his captivity. He does not tell the story of the guard. It first appears, as far as anyone can tell, in 1999, in McCain's book, Faith of my Fathers. [...] There may be nothing here. But McCain is a huge Solzhenitsyn fan. And the enthusiasm with which he repeats this story in his presidential incarnation contrasts oddly with his apparent reticence to mention the moment -- even when talking about religion and captivity -- in the thirty years before his presidential run."
• Balloon Juice's Michael D.: "I think there is pretty solid evidence that [McCain]'s just copying other peoples' shit. [...] The other possibility is that McCain really thinks this happened to him, and can't differentiate between something he read and something he actually experienced. [...] My guess? No one will ask McCain about it for fear of being accused of questioning his patriotism."
• dday: "It's entirely possible that this type of scene happened at a prison camp more than once, and there are differences between the two stories [...] This is not something you can prove or disprove. [But] that didn't matter in 2000. Al Gore said he invented the Internet and that he found Love Canal and that he and Tipper were the inspiration for Love Story. That's what happened and there was no shaking anyone in the media off of that, and they were going to use those and other nuggets to build a story about Gore's serial exaggerations."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "If I were a reporter, I would check it out, for instance by asking people who were prisoners with McCain whether they had heard this story at the time. Since I'm not a reporter, I plan to reserve judgment."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "I've now heard [this story] countless times. McCain has used what appears to be an intensely personal moment in a prison camp as a reason to vote for him in a campaign ad. As he tells it today, it was the pivotal moment in his struggle to survive in the Hanoi Hilton. And yet, in his first thorough account of his time in captivity, in 1973, the story is absent. The story is also hauntingly like that recounted by Solzhenitsen, as told in Luke Veronis, 'The Sign of the Cross'. [...] I have one simple question: when was the first time that McCain told this story?"

MCCAIN III: Another Foreign Policy Gaffe?

Liberal bloggers are accusing McCain of making a major gaffe when he described the Georgia conflict as the "first...serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War":

• Benen: "Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. has fought (or is fighting) two wars in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, and two conflicts in the Balkans. There have been multiple crises in Israel. There was a burgeoning nuclear crisis with North Korea. There is, and has been, a crisis in Darfur. There have been multiple, shall we say, tense moments between Pakistan and India, nuclear powers both. One could make the argument that the attacks of Sept. 11 were, themselves, a serious international crisis. And yet, there's John McCain, describing a regional conflict between Russia and Georgia as the first 'serious crisis internationally' since the end of the Cold War. Do the other crises simply not count? Or does McCain not remember them? Taken in isolation, McCain's frequent confusion about foreign affairs may seem like inconsequential verbal miscues, but taken together, the presumptive Republican nominee appears to have no idea what he's talking about."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Given that McCain has been using the situation in Georgia to pretend he's the president (speaking of presumptuous), it's not surprising that he wants to present this as the biggest crisis ever. And he's right, assuming you forget the Gulf War, and Somalia, and the Rwandan Genocide, and the earlier war in Georgia, and the breakup of Yugoslavia and all the wars that spawned, and 9/11, and Afghanistan, and Iraq and North Korean nuclear testing, and the war in Lebanon, and Darfur -- then this is the first serious international crisis since the end of the Cold War."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "[McCain's] New and Improved Talking Points: 'Iraq is just a regional conflict and Georgia is the true epicenter of the glorious struggle for western civilization.' The stupid just never, ever stops."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Beyond McCain's seemingly poor memory, the interesting thing is the confusion in terms of high-level concepts. It was just a little while ago that McCain was giving speeches about how 'the threat of radical Islamic terrorism' is 'transcendent challenge of our time.' Now Russia seems to be the transcendent challenge. Which is the problem with an approach to world affairs characterized by a near-constant hysteria about threat levels and a pathological inability to set priorities."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "One of the great threats we face is the personal sense of grandiosity of the lead foreign hands who shape the course of our role in the world. Not national grandiosity, but personal grandiosity. Because if you're a foreign policy hand or political leader your own quest for greatness is constrained by whether or not you live in times of grand historical events. There's a lot of this nonsense floating around today by pampered commentators who want to find a new world historical conflict to write bracing commentary about before we're done with the one from last week. But John McCain might be president in six months. And whether it's his own shaky judgment, temperament or just the desire to find a campaign issue, this loose cannon is a real threat to this country."
• hilzoy: "This is serious. I'm not trying to score political points here. One way or another, the next President will have to deal with our shattered reputation abroad and the challenges, predictable and unpredictable, that the next eight years throw at us. We cannot afford to elect another President who really doesn't get these things. Anyone who thinks that the war with Georgia is the first serious international crisis since the end of the Cold War, or who can say, without apparent irony, that 'In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations', is just not up to the job."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Wow. [McCain]'s more out of touch than we thought."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: No One For VP!

Yglesias:

"Like everyone else in DC, I'm pondering the so-called 'Veepstakes' -- [IN Sen.] Evan Bayh? [DE Sen.] Joe Biden? [RI Sen.] Jack Reed? [KS Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius? -- except unlike a lot of people I'm having a hard time developing really strong opinions about it. Which reminds me of one pretty strongly-held opinion of mine: We should eliminate the office of the Vice Presidency.

When you think about it, it's exceedingly odd. The Vice President has no formal role in the conduct of government to speak of. And yet, since the end of World War II the choice of VP has been very important. Not so much because the Vice President is an important person but because no many VPs go on ([Harry] Truman, [Richard] Nixon, [Lyndon] Johnson, [George] HW Bush) to become President while others ([Al] Gore, [Hubert] Humphrey, [Walter] Mondale) become major party nominees. Consequently, even though the office is trivial, the choice is very important. But the choice is also fairly important politically to the person who does the choosing. Therefore, 'would it be good for this person to become a presidential nominee' gets relatively little consideration during the decision-making process (relative to: would s/he be a good surrogate? give me a 'bounce'? help with a state?) even though it really ought to be the primary consideration. Beyond that, you have the '[Dick] Cheney Paradox.' It seems perverse to have a Vice President who doesn't do anything. But a Vice President who does too much becomes a destabilizing influence within the government -- nobody really knows who he speaks for, and he can influence things in ways that provide for no accountability."

LEST WE FORGET: Underprotective Father Demands Daughter Arrive Home By 10 A.M.

From The Onion:

"NASHVILLE, TN -- Local resident Nathan Corbin, 37, has set a strict 10 a.m. curfew for his 16-year-old daughter Kathy, the underbearing father told reporters Tuesday. 'Rules are rules -- she has to be through the door or at least passed out on the lawn by no later than 10 in the morning on school days,' said Corbin, adding that Kathy is no longer allowed to have more than three boys in her room at one time. 'I've also warned her on several occasions to keep it down when she comes home because her [14-year-old] brother [Kevin] has usually smoked quite a bit of pot by that time and is asleep on the couch.' Corbin admitted to recent laxness in enforcing his 'no stealing more than $35 a week from your stepmother' policy, but defended indulging his daughter, citing the increased cost of cigarettes."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at August 18, 2008 01:54 PM