Saddleback?
You mean it's not the Equestrian competition in the Olympics?
CNN covered Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, where he discussed faith issues with Barack Obama and John McCain. It opened to thunderous applause from a crowd that seemed to be mostly members of Warren's church.
How religious do you have to be to care for this Saddleback Church event? And if you are a religious nut, aren't you already going to vote for McCain anyway?
I watched some of it...enough to know that the anti-intellectual strain in this country never ceases to amaze me. "Give it to me straight, just don't require me to think" really plays into the hands of McCain.
If anybody out there thinks that Pastor Warren wants anything other than a right-wing Republican president, I've got some sweet real estate deals for you.
Neither candidate made any major mistakes. McCain gave a performance. Obama listened to and answered Warren's questions.
Notice how Warren kept advising Barack to not give a "stump speech"...and then continued to let McCain do just that. He had his stump speech talking points ready, and was eager to cram as many of them into his 50 minutes as possible.
Obama had a game plan -- speak to the audience of Rick Warren evangelicals in a calm and reasoned way that challenges the Muslim Mandingo crap that lands in their email inboxes. To reassure people who probably won't vote for him anyway that it won't be the end of the world if he wins.
Otherwise, it's the blahs before the conventions...and by the end of the month this forum is going to be as relevant as last week's TV Guide.
A very intense moment came when Warren asked McCain what his greatest moral failing was, and after a moment's hesitation McCain replied that it was the failure of his first marriage.
I'm glad that McCain finally copped to dumping his children and crippled wife to marry a beer heiress 20 years his junior to finance his political career.
That much was worth watching.
