Obama Does Beautiful Job in Orange County Church

I had a very interesting afternoon and evening. My wife and I watched the Q&A at Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County, California. We watched Barack's sit-down for a one-on-one with Pastor Warren, and were quite satisfied with another terrific performance by Barack. He was calm, engaged, humorous but quite serious about responding to questions on a variety of topics, many of which had religious content or dealt with issues of a personal nature and much less on policy.

We interrupted the two-hour program and went to dinner on the coast to celebrate our anniversary. Thank you very much! Having taped the portion where John McCain answered essentially the same questions from Warren, we really couldn'twait to sit down and witness McCain's performance. I don't think I've yelled at the TV more since the Gore-Bush debates just about eight years ago.

Obama listened politely to the questions and answered them fairly, succinctly and thoughtfully. McCain. on the other hand, anticipated every question and seemed prepared to answer as if he had written the questions. He had obviously heard the questions beforehand. Obama was warned by Warren not to give his standard stump speech as his answers, and he didn't. McCain was given no such admonition, and he should have been, because his presentation was his stump speech.

My lowest grade goes to Pat Buchanan for his comments after the show that Barack looked tortured and gave answers that were essentially all over the place. I told my wife that he must have been watching a different show than I. I am in agreement that McCain did excel at this format, but there is no follow-up question nor challenge to any of McCain's grandiose pronouncements and/or statements that could only be called over the top and grandstanding, and it was tremendously frustrating.

Obama was polite, answered quite thoroughly and gave answers that genuinely reflected his true feelings and I believe encompass the viewpoints of the vast minority of the American people. He expressed himself with warmth, honesty and with a great amount of skill, whereas McCain seemed to take almost every question and turn it into a long-winded opportunity to pander to the obviously partisan crowd and said "my friends" probably eight times. I am not his friend!

This following article does a superb job of accurately covering the events of tonight. If you get a chance to watch these two presentations, see if you agree with me. Obama was quite good tonight. I was proud of him and pleased to enjoy what he had to say, and I honestly felt sad watching McCain and realized that he's very good in this format. It doesn't make him a good choice for president, but on this night, I will acknowledge that he was masterful. But as a final thought, I'll take Obama 100 times out of 100. He is my guy.

Obama slams Thomas, hugs McCainBy MIKE ALLEN 8/16/08 9:14 PM EST Text Size:

The candidates meet at Saddleback Church in California to discuss religion, morals and personal questions.Photo: AP

Asked which justice he wouldn’t have nominated to the Supreme Court, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Saturday night named Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s only African American. Obama was asked the provocative question by Pastor Rick Warren, the moderator of the “Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency” at the megachurch Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, which is in Orange County, Calif. Thomas was nominated by President George H.W. Bush, the current president’s father. “I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time, for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the constitution,” Obama began. The forum went for two hours – the first hour with Obama, based on a coin flip, and the second hour with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

In between, they shook hands onstage in their first meeting since they clinched the nomination. Obama reached out and gave McCain a hug. They then waved to the crowd with Warren between them, and McCain flashed his trademark thumbs-up. All three men were tieless. They appeared before a large live audience at the church, and the forum was shown live on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. Warren said he was going to ask the two “identical” questions so viewers could compare. Warren joked that he would keep McCain in a "cone of silence" during Obama's segment. Obama, just back from a Hawaiian vacation, was quite relaxed. McCain turned solemn early in the interview when he was asked his greatest moral failure. "My greatest moral failing, and I have been a very imperfect person, is the failure of my first marriage," McCain said. "It's my greatest moral failure." On the Supreme Court section, Obama added that he “would not nominate Justice Antonin Scalia, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan. Scalia and Thomas are the court’s most conservative justices. Obama said of Scalia: “I don’t think there’s any doubt about his intellectual brilliance. … He and I just disagree. You know, he taught at the University of Chicago, as did I, in the law school.” Asked about Chief Justice John Roberts, nominated by President Bush, Obama said: “You know, John Roberts, I have to say, was a tougher question, only because I find him to be a very compelling person, you know, in conversation, individually. “He’s clearly smart – very thoughts. I will tell you that how I’ve seen him operate since he went to the bench confirms the suspicions that I had, and the reason that I voted against him. And I’ll give you one very specific instance, and this is not a stump speech.” Warren had warned Obama against pulling answers from his stump speech. Now, he made a “cut” sign across his throat. “I’m getting the cues,” Obama quipped. “One of the most important jobs of, I believe, the Supreme Court is to guard against the encroachment of the executive branch on the power of the other branches. And I think that he has been a little bit too willing and eager to give an administration – whether it’s mine, or George Bush’s – more power than I think the constitution originally intended.” Two-third of the way into the hour, Warren high-fived Obama for a clever reference to the pastor’s “The Purpose Driven Life,” said to be the best-selling non-fiction book in U.S. history. Warren asked Obama to define rich: “Give me a number.” Obama drew laughter when he briefly hesitated, then quipped: “You know if you’ve got book sales of 25 million … ” Turning serious toward the end, Obama said: “I want people to know me well,” and added that if they do, “they’re going to make a good decision and we’re going to be able to solve the big problems that we face.” Asked what he would tell the American people if he knew there would be no repercussions, Obama said: “Solving big problems —- like, for example, energy – is not going to be easy. Everybody’s going to have to get involved.” The crowd was mixed. Audience members thundered applause when Obama said he believes marriage is the union of a man and a woman. But the crowd also clapped when he said he would not support a constitutional amendment codifying that definition.

Warren and the candidates sat at a spare set, with just two mugs on it. Asked his definition of "rich," McCain tossed off "$5 million," then seemed to recognize comments he had tossed off in the past that had come back to him in ads by the opposition. "I'm sure that comment will be distorted," McCain said. "The point is we want to keep people's taxes low. ... I don't want to raised anybody's taxes." McCain, who in the past has rarely talked about his captivity during the Vietnam War after he crashed as a Navy aviator, spoke of the mistreatment by guards — and of the guard he showed his faith by tracing a cross on the ground. On the justices-he-wouldn't-nominate question, McCain had a near-majority — Justice Bader Ginsburg (nominated by President Bill Clinton), Stephen G. Breyer (Clinton), David Souter (the first President Bush, John Paul Stevens (President Gerald Ford). "This nomination should be based on the criteria of proven record of strictly adhering to the Constitution of the United States of America, and not legislating from the bench," McCain said. McCain named the chief justice and Justice Samuel Alito — President Bush's nominees — as among his favorites. McCain got a huge cheer when he spoke up for charter schools, vouchers and home schooling. "Choice and competition," he said. "Home schooling works."