Campaign Diaries

In their first appearance on the same stage since Barack Obama wrapped up the Democratic nomination, the two presidential candidates participated in a forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church. Shown live on the cable news shows and watched by thousands on the church’s premises, the forum was devoted to religious issues and an opportunity for both candidates to display their faith in back-to-back interviews.

It is difficult to assess this type of event without knowing exactly who is watching (evangelicals or a broader public?) and what angle the media will use when covering the forum. But what we do know is that the first event that can be used to truly compare the two candidates was held in a Church and devoted to their faith and approach to social issues - and that fact alone tells us a lot about the strength of the evangelical community. Much has been made of the decline of the Religious Right over the past couple of years, but both Obama and McCain clearly feel that value voters could be as key to this election as they were in 2008.

One reason both candidates appeared at this forum is that it presented an obvious opportunity for both of them. Unlike 2004, when President Bush was embraced the Religious Right, John McCain has not been an obvious candidate for social conservatives to rally around - leading some Democrats to speculate they had the potential to appeal to a significant proportion of the evangelical population to at least drive down the intensity of the community’s support for the GOP.

For Barack Obama, tonight’s forum was an opportunity to showcase his faith and justify his pro-choice views (the big obstacle for Democrats to make any inroads with evangelicals) - not to mention that it cannot hurt Obama to talk about his Christian beliefs given the continuing success of the false rumors about his religion. Obama did well tonight, offering personal responses, discussing his faith and showing his familiarity with the Bible by quoting Matthew 25.

In this religious crowd, Obama scored points by defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman - though he did follow that up by endorsing civil unions and opposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. And his long answer on abortion did not receive a very positive reception either. At times, Obama seemed hesitant, taking a few seconds to answer and struggling for words - a bit more rusty than he should look at the debates, perhaps because he had just gotten back from vacation.

But while the crowd gave Obama a strong reception, they were clearly McCain’s audience - a good sign for the Republican’s effort to win the enthusiastic support of social conservatives. Given that the Religious Right has to seriously be disappointed in McCain before any door opens for Obama, this forum was first and foremost an opportunity for the Republican to rally a constituency with whom he shares a lot policy-wise. Much of the social conservatives’ distrust has come from McCain’s dislike for talking about abortion and gay rights - but tonight’s forum was a golden opportunity. On stage with no one else but a pastor, invited to talk about nothing but social issues for an hour, McCain was bound to satisfy the audience.

He is, after all, religious enough to declare “I am saved and forgiven.” And he is a Republican: undoubtedly pro-life, anti-gay marriage, pro-vouchers, facing no need to nuance his support for faith-based initiatives, capable of muddying issues like stem cell research and civil unions and supportive of the Supreme Court Justices most liked by conservatives. All of this, of course, made his answers to some of Warren’s questions more straight-forward and more in line with what evangelicals were waiting for. McCain delivered a solid performance that should reassure many social conservatives.

And while McCain might not like to voluntarily bring up social issues on the trail, he clearly loves nothing more than bringing up his years as a POW in Vietnam. Asked about his faith and about the most gut-wrenching decision he has made in his life, McCain brought up two stories that those of us who have been following the campaign for months have heard many times (and seen in ads in New Hampshire) - his interaction with a Vietnamese soldier who drew a cross on the ground and his refusal to be freed early. But for viewers who have not heard McCain tell those stories, both anecdotes sounded like moving and deeply personal answers.

McCain had a potentially dangerous moment (if Democrats get those negative ads together), when he put the threshold of “rich” at “$5 million.” That comment will certainly not help his attempts to portray Obama as the elitist candidate of the race, particularly given the increasing focus on his wife’s fortune and their multiple houses. But a good moment came when he was asked about his biggest moral failure and he voluntarily brought up the failure of his first marriage, thus pretty much taking the issue out of the rest of the conversation though Democrats were hoping it would fit more prominently.

It is interesting, finally, that McCain’s answers often sounded less religious than Obama’s. McCain described his faith by referring to his courage while Obama quoted Scripture; when asked if evil existed and how they would deal with it, McCain’s answer was entirely about Al Qaeda and the terrorist threat, whereas Obama’s was more general - and could be applied in a more religious context. In particular, McCain often presented his commitment to public service as deriving from the same source as his commitment to his faith. He repeated his call to serve a cause greater than yourself, using that as the reason he was running for public office and confirming that his slogan “Country First” will be the central argument of his general election campaign.

Update: As a comment points out, it has now been revealed that John McCain was not in the building in the first half of Obama’s interview, meaning that Warren’s statement that McCain was in “a cone of silence” and would not know the questions being asked of Obama was not true. (To be fair to McCain, it’s not his fault that Warren decided to ask the same questions twice without McCain being in that famous “cone of silence.” How could Warren not have known that McCain was still far away from the church?) A second controversy now concerns McCain’s “cross in the dirt” story.

Update #2: In case we need more proof that the POW card will be used at every possible opportunity, here’s the McCain campaign’s response to news that he was not in a cone of silence: “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.”