What I Liked Most About McCain and Obama and Warren

Last night we happened to be pool partying over at my in-law's house when the Saddleback Forum event came on TV. So we were able to watch it. This was an event where Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church, interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain. Each presidential candidate was interviewed separately and asked pretty much the same questions. Obama went first while McCain waited in a soundproof room.

I liked that Warren asked the candidates tough questions. Normally in presidential debates some national news anchor lobs softballs at the candidates, who ignore the dumb question and answer with an irrelevant clip from their stump speech. Not so last night. There was no getting around the questions. And both candidates answered most of the questions well.

McCain was clearly more comfortable. That seemed good to me. He's traditionally not been comfortable around evangelical Christians. But he definitely was relaxed, and he made good connects with his audience. By contrast, Obama was clearly not comfortable. Despite saying some good things that got audience applause, he never settled into a comfortable rhythm.

Both candidates gave great answers to the question most important to me, though I think McCain gave a better answer. I really liked McCain's answer. Both candidates said that we are heading into difficult times: economically, domestically, internationally, etc. And both candidates said that Americans are going to have to make sacrifices. We can no longer live thinking only of ourselves and how we are going to prosper. We need to think of others. McCain said it best when he took a jab at President Bush.

McCain said that he thought it was wrong to encourage Americans to go shopping in response to 9/11. He said that instead we should have exhorted Americans to join the Peace Corp. His line that Americans should be "serving a cause greater than your own self-interest" is a message for our times.

Comments

[Melissa]

I watched this, and I read the transcript for what McCain said because it was taking too long to watch. And all i have to say i regardless whether or not mccain was more comfortable answering the questions or not, it doesn't matter. the things coming out of his mouth are still contradictory to his policies and he still doesn't even seem to recall basic history. the first person he talks about being the wisest person is david petreus, who "brought us from defeat to victory in iraq" where is this victory? this victory has not even been defined yet. it has not happened. we are still there. and later on, mccain says that "it's not just in iraq, it's not just in afghanistan" so that should give you some insight into how widespread the problem is and how far away this "victory" actually is. and personally, i find the way he talks about "islamic extremists" compared to the US' "judeo-christian" values to be divisive and being intolerant of other religions. besides that, we can't strenghthen the economy, fix our schools, clean our energy, if we keep spending millions of dollars every month on a war that is not even defined. furthermore, the longer we aggravate war, the weaker our country will get, in every aspect.

Secondly, he says he changed his mind about offshore drilling since 10 years ago, and that we need to drill offshore to "gain energy independence." yet, offshore drilling will NOT give us energy independence, but the worst part is that he doesn't seem to be wanting to move away from oil in any way. He thinks we'll just be driving oil powered vehicles forever, and it just can't happen. it has to change. he talks all this big talk about how we have to be self-sacrificing and give the future generation something better, but how are we supposed to do that when he won't make this most crucial step? we must move away from oil, and it's going to be expensive, but if we do not, we'll be spending the money we saved by using oil to clean up environmental disasters.

Thirdly, he says he will follow osama bin laden to the gates of hell, because osama thinks he can just "come into america and take thousands of innocent american lives"... well, what about the thousands of innocent iraqis who have died since the beginning of the war. we don't keep track of those numbers, but certainly there have been more innocent iraqis killed than the americans who died on 9/11, and they have died at the hands of US ignorance and incompetence of the situation.
at one point, he also notes that America has not always been able to solve all the worlds problems, but we have been the best at doing it (self-sacrifice)... and well, that to me is pending. it depends on whether you view overconsumption of the worlds limited resources as HELPING the world, because that's pretty much what we've done since WW2, and i'm sure you know that as much as I do. So in any case, if mining other countries precious resources, destroying other countries environments, and taking advantage of what is basically slave labor, is considered being the best at charity, well I think the world has a pretty low standard.

I know you didn't exactly say you liked mccain but you liked what he said about how it was wrong to tell people to go shopping, and perhaps we should've tapped into charitability when we had the opportunity, but everything john mccain says is just contradictory to what will happen if he gets in office. think about the type of people he said he valued - david petreus and his ability to get people to come back to fight in an unjust war, and the people in uniform that he has talked to. this basically says to me that john mccain only values people who will give up their lives for this messed up foreign policy that we have. those who will "fight for freedom." but if freedom means being able to go to a giant wal-mart supercenter and have the ability to choose from thousands of products that come from unstable parts of the world, well then i don't want to fight for that freedom, cause it's that "freedom" that's destroying the world.
and you and i both know america ain't free, because we have seen and read about how brainwashed people are from advertising and marketing. to the point where we don't make our own decisions anymore.

[Dave Bruno]

Melissa, thanks for the long comment. I appreciate your thoughts.

Presidential politics is an awfully difficult. I don't disagree with some of the things you say. And yet I suppose I'd be more of a realist. We have a crazy unfortunate dependence on oil. What do we do? We could all stop driving, go naked (since all our clothes are heavily petroleum dependent), and not eat any store-bought food (which also relies on lots of oil). How do we move from such massive reliance on oil to an energy solution that is more sustainable? The fast answer is, "Not overnight. And not without major pain. Pain, not only in all of us cutting back on wastefulness. But also the pain of having to do things we don't want to do so that later - maybe decades later - we can be on the right track." I'm not sure off-shore drilling is something we should do. But if not that, then something else you and I wouldn't like. That's the spot we are in. Frankly, solving the energy crisis is such a threat to political power and industrial power that it will be nothing short of a miracle if we see it done. But I'm hopeful even so.

As for your dislike of calling extremist Muslims evil and your suggestion that such statements are not tolerant, I honestly think you just don't understand what you are saying. No one is calling "Muslims" evil. No one is saying that a Christian is a more valuable human being than a Muslim. What McCain and Obama and everyone else with common sense and a working moral compass is saying is that extremists who prefer killing because they themselves are intolerant are evil. What they do is evil. What the US did in response to 9/11 might have been bad strategy and even "wrong." But no one should be calling it evil. We did not set out to kill innocent people. And our country has means of attempting to make things right when we do. Again, that is not saying we should be fighting the war in Iraq. But you really should put evil into perspective. Sawing off a journalist's head is a lot different than dropping a bomb that goes off target. Both are horrible consequences of a world full of wrong. But only the first example qualifies as "evil." Personally I think we should not tolerate such evil. And we should try to defeat it.

[Melissa]

converting to clean energy will be a bitch for everyone. it may will cause another great depression.. the transition. but i'm looking forward to that...
I understand the diff. between an extremist terrorist and a muslim. the way that things have been presented have shone a bad light on that culture in general. No one is saying (out loud, at least) that a christian life is more valuable than a muslim life, but that is what is being presented. some people believe that. some people believe we should just christianize the entire world. that goes against our own constitution, but there is still religious intolerance in this country. we do not have the perfect system either. in fact... far from that. but what i was trying to point out is that you can't deny the fact that the war and the culture gap have put a sort of stigma on that part of the world, as if they were second class citizens. or maybe americans just think they're better than everyone else in general... i dont support ron paul, but he was right when he said we're going to another part of the world and we're telling them how they should live, and we wouldn't tolerate it here so why should they tolerate it there? ... but yes i also understand that extremist terrorists is a whole diff. ball game that has to be looked at from a different perspective.
no, we did not set out to kill innocent people, but our troops did in the process, some even on purpose. some of our own troops tortured and killed people just for fun or for no reason at all. so that's a pretty big smudge on the american name, the so-called purveyors of freedom.
"defeat evil" is a pretty loaded statement and/or goal. the way we are going about it is not the best way, it's not even a good way. it's violence fighting violence. there may not be another way at this point... but i just hope people understand that this didn't happen overnight. it's an accumulation of a lot of things that haven't been addressed for the last 50 or 60 years. US oil dependence being one of those things. so we can't just sit back and look dumbfounded, like.. why are they targeting us? there are reasons and they are apparent.