Michael Gerson says that John McCain’s performance at Saddleback may be a turning point for the candidate, who showed that he just does better at unscripted, town-hall type events than Barack Obama:
What took place instead under Warren’s precise and revealing questioning was the most important event so far of the 2008 campaign — a performance every voter should seek out on the Internet and watch.
First, the forum previewed the stylistic battle lines of the contest ahead, and it should give Democrats pause. Obama was fluent, cool and cerebral — the qualities that made Adlai Stevenson interesting but did not make him president. Obama took care to point out that he had once been a professor at the University of Chicago, but that bit of biography was unnecessary. His whole manner smacks of chalkboards and campus ivy. Issues from stem cell research to the nature of evil are weighed, analyzed and explained instead of confronted.
This approach has a genuine appeal to some voters, especially of a more liberal bent, who believe there is a nuance shortage in American life. But on Saturday night it did not compare well with McCain, who was decisive, passionate and surprisingly personal. The candidate who once seemed incapable of the confessional style of politics talked at length of Vietnam experiences and his adopted daughter from Bangladesh. Asked by Warren about his greatest moral failure, McCain’s response — “the failure of my first marriage” — had an abrupt and disarming authenticity. The account of his hardest decision — refusing release from captivity during the Vietnam War ahead of others who had been imprisoned longer — remains shocking in its valor. And McCain’s habit of understatement — he described the excruciating rope torture he experienced in Vietnam as “very uncomfortable” — makes his stories even more effective. . . .
Obama’s response on abortion — the issue that remains his largest obstacle to evangelical support — bordered on a gaffe. Asked by Warren at what point in its development a baby gains “human rights,” Obama said that such determinations were “above my pay grade” — a silly answer to a sophisticated question. If Obama is genuinely unsure about this matter, he (and the law) should err in favor of protecting innocent life. If Obama believes that a baby in the womb lacks human rights, he should say so — pro-choice men and women must affirm (as many sincerely do) that developing life has a lesser status. Here the professor failed the test of logic.
For many evangelicals, the theoretical Obama — the Obama of hope and unity — is intriguing, even appealing. But this opinion is not likely to improve upon closer inspection of his policy views. Obama is one of those rare political figures who seems to grow smaller the closer we approach him.
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