Posted on 08/18/2008 6:06:46 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
Barack Obama bumped into something hard on Saturday night. The nuanced naif of Illinois preceded -- in Paris Hilton’s wonderful snark -- the “wrinkly white-haired dude” in Pastor Rick Warren’s civility summit and came up very short.
You can judge how well McCain did by the minimalist coverage in the media. The highlights reported here were virtually ignored in the Sunday papers.
McCain has never been better. His self deprecation, his humor, and his life story turned the back-to-back interviews into a conclusive demonstration that he is ready for the presidency and Obama isn’t. Continued -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsored Links: Amazing Japanese Longevity Secret Ann Coulter: Get Ann's scathing commentary by email every week! Breaking News: Over 2,000 Failing Mutual Funds to Dump Right Now! BRIC Investor Report: Brazil, Russia, India & China stocks Laura Ingraham's New "Power to the People" -- Yours FREE!
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McCain was energized, comfortable and quietly eloquent in explaining why his life proves the most important of qualities in a president: character and core beliefs. Obama -- consistently charming and shallow -- demonstrated neither of those qualities.
John McCain was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese for more than five years. Researching an article four years ago on John Kerry’s antiwar activities during many of those same years, I interviewed more than a half-dozen of McCain’s fellow POWs. Each of them, in much the same words, said “I wouldn’t be alive today but for the personal courage of John McCain.”
That courage was explained, calmly, by McCain when Warren asked him to describe the most difficult “gut-wrenching” decision in his life.
McCain answered, “It was long ago and far away in a prison camp in North Vietnam. My father was a high ranking admiral. The Vietnamese came and said that I could leave prison early. And we had a code of conduct that said you only leave by order of capture. I also had a dear and beloved friend who was from California by the name of Ed Alvarez who had been shot down and captured a couple years before me. But I wasn't in good physical shape. In fact I was in rather bad physical shape.”
“So I said no. Now, in interest of full disclosure, I'm very happy I didn't know the war was going to last for another three years or so. But I said no. And I'll never forget. The high-ranking officer who offered it slammed the door and the interrogator said go back to your cell, it's going to be very tough on you now. And it was. But [it was] not only the toughest decision I ever made but I'm most happy about that decision than any decision I've ever made in my life. It took a lot of prayer. It took a lot of prayer.”
In answer to the same question, the best Obama could do was to claim his decision to oppose the war in Iraq was his toughest. How that was a gut-wrenching decision he didn’t explain. Given the fact that his campaign for the Democratic nomination succeeded because that “decision” gave Obama a huge advantage among the anti-war liberals who control the Democratic Party, Obama’s answer revealed political calculation, not moral courage.
McCain was presidential; Obama was a policy wonk. Warren, in the context of taxation, asked each candidate to define who is rich. Obama wandered around to conclude that a family whose income is $150,000 or less is “middle class.” McCain defined “rich” not in terms of dollar income, but in security, opportunity and freedom to choose the future of the family’s children. McCain sounded Reaganesque: “I think that rich is -- should be defined -- by a home, a good job and education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited.”
McCain took a full swing on question after question. Obama bunted.
Answering Warren’s question of when a baby is entitled to human rights, Obama said, “Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”
Obama said he was pro-choice. When pressed to say whether he’d ever voted to limit abortions, Obama slipped and slid around the question, claiming he was in favor of limits on late-term abortions, but cited no example of ever voting for legislation to create such limits. McCain said plainly that he believed that life beings at conception and that, “I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro life policies. That's my commitment, that's my commitment to you.”
Obama defined marriage as between a man and a woman but then launched into an academic disquisition on why he wouldn’t support a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He said, “I think my faith is strong enough and my marriage is strong enough that I can afford those civil rights to others even if I have a different perspective or a different view.” Obama apparently believes gay marriage is a “civil right.” McCain doesn’t.
McCain -- an attack pilot, not a lawyer -- apparently has a deeper understanding of Constitutional law than the former chief of the Harvard Law Review. He said he’d support a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, “…If a Federal court decided that my state of Arizona had to observe what the state of Massachusetts decided, then I would favor a Constitutional amendment.” The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution compels that result. Without an amendment, any gay marriage from any state must be given legitimacy by every other state.
Saturday night, Obama’s charm failed to mask his humorlessness. McCain’s comparative charm deficit (“You know, by a strange coincidence I was not elected ‘Miss Congeniality’ in the United States Senate this year. I don't know why”) didn’t mask his sense of humor.
Asked to name a changed position, McCain gently mocked California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by saying his new-found support for offshore drilling wouldn’t be popular with many people “here in Caleefornia.” Talking about how America needs to build more nuclear power plants, McCain said that America likes to imitate the French. Most endearingly to those of us who cannot resist poking fun at the genetically disagreeable French, McCain said, “…and by the way if you hadn't noticed we now have a pro-American president of France which proves if you live long enough anything can happen in America.”
McCain scored a lot of points with conservatives in the Saturday night forum. His performance was so strong, and if he chooses to capitalize on it, this could be a tipping point for McCain.
His next opportunity to take a big step along that path will be the choice of his running mate. Choosing a strong conservative (Fred Thompson? Mike Pence?) to run with him, McCain could energize and unite Republicans for the remainder of this campaign. 2008 need not be a disaster for Republicans. The decisions that could prove the doomsayers wrong are not above John McCain’s pay grade.
This is an easy read and a good one for FReepers to email to their friends.
The idiots at DU are having fits about a NYTimes piece saying that McCain wasn’t in a “cone of silence.” They whine that Rick Warren lied and that McCain might have had the questions ahead of time. Can you say PARANOIA????
Here’s all any Conservative needs to know about Barrack Hussein Obama:
Special Interest Group Ratings:
Planned Parenthood - 100% Support
National Right To Life - 0% Support
NARAL - 100% Support
Americans for Tax Reform - 0% Support
ACLU - 83% Support
NEA - 100% Support
NOW Hags - 100% Support
Citizens Against Government Waste - 13% Support
Gun Owners of America - 0% Support
NRA - “F” Rating
Federation for American Immigration Reform - 0% Support
US Border Patrol - 8% Support
Unions - 82% - 100% Support
Population Connection - 100% Support (These are the ‘Zero Growth’ freaks)
http://vote-smart.org/issue_rating_category.php?can_id=BS030017
[Barrack Hussein Obama’s record in the Illinois senate:]
- Opposed the Defense of Marriage Act; would work to repeal it in the U.S. Senate; would not vote for any legislation that would restrict the ability of gays and lesbians to marry.
- Opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times in Illinois. A similar bill passed the U.S. Senate 98-0. The Born Alive bill would have prohibited a baby from being born alive but left to die according to the mother’s wishes. Obama inexplicably opposed this bill not once, twice, or three times, but four times.
- Obama took almost $90,000 in bundled contributions from the Council for a Livable World. The council is a well-known anti-defense organization.
- Obama puts rigid ideology before what’s best for the people of Illinois, and presumably he would do that as President as well. He has on several occasions made public his opposition to the NAFTA trade agreement and his belief that it must be negotiated. All the while thanks to NAFTA, Illinois exports $1.3 billion in agricultural goods to Canada.
- Obama refused to vote for a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would have increased penalties for drug traffickers.
- Obama voted against a bill that would have delivered the death penalty to gang members who murder first responders.
- Finally, just in case you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to vote against a bill that prohibited early release for sexual predators.
Can’t kill the innocent fast enough, can’t free the guilty soon enough!
What kind of an idiot would need THOSE kind of questions ahead of time to look good?
Enjoy it while it lasts. Fox is preparing a one-hour hit job on McCain to air tomorrow night in O’Reilly’s time slot. And I was just warming up to McCain...
(they are supposedly going to air the same for Obama tonight. However, it remains to be seen how they will treat his early history, association with terrorist, the wrong Reverend Wright, etc.)
It's not the questions he had ahead of time, but the ANSWERS!!
It was a big McCain win. The “above my pay grade,” remark should become the centerpiece of the next GOP opposition ad.
When I mentioned that Obama was stammering around and can't think on his feet, she corrected me; "He's trying too hard to say what he means in a way that won't offend anyone. He's being deceptive."
Case closed.
“You can judge how well McCain did by the minimalist coverage in the media.”
That says it all.
Obama lied while trying to straddle the fence to play to the middle, and McCain lied while staking a clear position to placate his base. Not sure there's much of a difference there.
The next time for Pete’s sake give the baby the questions ahead of time so we don’t have to go through all of thoses ums and ahs while he tries to form a subject with a predicate.
I just forwarded this article on and included both of your comments, as they pretty much answered the Dems’ fake complaint.
You both nailed it!
I was at a Republican event Saturday where Col Bud Day spoke about his friendship with his (as he put it)”former cellmate when we were in jail” - I walked in already knowing I was voting for McC but not 100% happy with that choice....I walked out energized, ready to work my a$$ off to help do whatever is needed to get him elected....I went from “voting against Obama” to 100% “voting FOR McCain”....
AND, how upset they were at how prepared and knwoledgable McCain sounded compared to the floundring inept Obama. What next? Andrea Mitchell will probably accuse McCain of having a 48 hour session before the questioning to review the questions and prepare his answers.
It answers the question of which one will best be able to handle those 3 a.m. phone calls, doesn’t it?
Actually, there’s a huge difference. John McCain is actually fairly consistent in his pro-life message. I say ‘fairly’ because he has an unfortunate affinity for embryonic stem-cell research.
Obama, on the other hand, has staked out a radical position on the far left (farther left than any of his colleagues in the Senate) yet can’t defend it. “It’s above my paygrade” doesn’t compute when you are going for the highest ‘paygrade’ in the land. He is a man standing on a position, not a conviction.
when you hear the ideologues grasping for straws to stay afloat,
then you know their candidate got his nuances kicked!
You could even hear some gasps or mumbles from Obama supporters in the congregation when he said that. You know they knew he had seriously f***** up right then and there.
That’s the way all presidential debates should be.
McCain kicked tail!
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