Squaring the Culture

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA (near Los Angeles) and author of The Purpose-Driven Life, invited the presidential candidates to participate in his church’s Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion, which aired on television last night. The candidates did not face off debate-style, but were interviewed individually by Warren in front of a live audience. The outcome of the discussion appears to have been an unambiguous win for McCain.

I didn’t watch it, but blogs on both sides of the aisle agree that Obama gave long, complex answers where McCain gave short, precise answers, and the crowd liked McCain better. The Other McCain has a nice roundup of observations from various blogs and news sources, and quips “If you needed any more evidence that John McCain dominated, Andrew Sullivan has called it a draw.” Huffington Post, believe it or not, has a decent article describing various positions the candidates took.

The most interesting take from the evening was a near-gaffe by Obama, brought to us by Hot Air. Obama comes within a hair’s width of saying that he didn’t think Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was “experienced enough” to handle the job. After the first syllable of “experienced” slipped out, he juked left and said instead that Thomas was “not a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time.” Smooth catch, Barak. Can you imagine the firestorm that would have ensued if he’d actually said that? Check it out:

Allahpundit at Hot Air notes that Obama basically called Thomas stupid, emphasizing it when he noted next that he would not have nominated Scalia to the Court either, but that nobody could dispute Scalia’s intellectual power. “Thomas is stupid” is a favorite meme of leftists when discussing the conservatives on the Court; but then again, as Ann Coulter pointed out in Slander, leftists eventually call any conservative politician “stupid;” there’s very little variety in leftist insults. Scalia apparently has earned exemption because he’s so brilliant that nobody could say he was stupid and retain credibility. Of course, Clarence Thomas is anything but stupid; now that Obama is on record calling him that, I would dearly love to watch a Firing Line-style discussion between Obama and Thomas on national TV, as Thomas, unlike Obama, is a man of both intellectual force and moral substance. They’d have to sweep Obama up with a dustbin and broom afterward.

I don’t recall a media event at this level involving a megachurch before. The fact that a political debate was hosted by a major Evangelical church and that it was taken seriously by the punditocracy marks an interesting development in American politics. It appears that despite furious attempts to prevent it, Evangelicalism has finally gone mainstream.

You can find the complete transcript of the interviews here. H/T Power Line.