The interviews of McCain and Obama at Saddleback Church by Rick Warren were very interesting. I liked that the candidates were not confronting or reacting to each other. It gave a chance to focus on each candidate separately. I’d like to see more such interviews.<\/p>\n
The contrast between the candidates was also interesting, less for their positions on issues, which are already pretty clear, than for their style.<\/p>\n
McCain’s answers were refreshingly clear and crisp. His supporters would say that he knows what he thinks and isn’t afraid to say it. His detractors would say that he has a simplistic black and white view of a gray world.<\/p>\n
Obama’s responses were much more nuanced and complex. His supporters would say that he sees more than one side to issues and understands that there aren’t simple answers to complicated problems. His detractors would say that he skirted around the questions and talked more like a politician than a leader.<\/p>\n
Overall I would think that people already solidly in one camp or the other were probably not swayed by the interviews. But my feeling was that McCain might have gained a few supporters from those who didn’t know him well. He came across as friendly, frank and clear on his positions. I think he said “My friends” a little too often, but overall gave a good impression.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Obama is probably better known already because of the fascination with him as an unconventional candidate, so there was less room for people to learn about him.<\/p>\n
Of course people with strong feelings one way or the other about abortion, Iraq, socialized medicine, etc. care less about presentation than substance, but I suspect that these people are in the minority. Charisma often beats content.<\/p>\n
Personally I think the questions about faith are irrelevant and improper. The Constitution says there can be no religious tests for candidates. On the other hand, I understand that this is an important issue for many citizens. I can imagine if Thomas Jefferson were a candidate today he might have some real problems confessing that he was not a Christian and that he denied the divinity of Christ.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The interviews of McCain and Obama at Saddleback Church by Rick Warren were very interesting. I liked that the candidates were not confronting or reacting to each other. It gave a chance to focus on each candidate separately. I’d like to see more such interviews. The contrast between the candidates was also interesting, less for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daryllafferty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}