Published: September 04, 2008 12:20 pm            

Tar Heel DIspatch – McCain turns corner

On Nov. 5 we may look back at Pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Forum as the turning point of the 2008 presidential campaign. Warren, the bestselling author of the book The Purpose Driven Life, hosted both Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain individually, one after the other for an hour each.

Observers noticed Obama received a polite, but cool reception, often dodging direct answers in favor of longer nuanced explanations. Juxtaposed against McCain’s often abrupt, but firm responses in the second half of the program, Obama appeared to have been searching for just the right spin to hold his own in front of a crowd of evangelicals who represent a quarter of the electorate.

Obama’s potential gains from the event were minimal at best. Democrats have been repackaging their message to appeal to evangelicals ever since they propelled an improbable Bush presidency into its second term in 2004. Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean once famously declared that his favorite New Testament book was Job. He gets an A for effort.

Obama has already shut the door on most potential cross over votes from the evangelical community (or card carrying NRA members for that matter). This spring an audio clip was leaked of Obama telling a private gathering of campaign donors in San Francisco that bitter small-town Americans “cling” to guns and religion to express their frustrations.

Saddleback reinforced Obama’s youth and inexperience, especially compared with McCain’s decades of experience. But Obama does have a record, albeit a short one, in the Illinois Senate. There he had no trouble making a decision on when life begins.

Obama received a 100 percent rating from Illinois’ branch of the country’s top abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. He earned it, too. According to research done by the Washington Post, Obama had at least seven “present” votes on measures designed to limit hideous forms of abortion. Illinois senators have the option of voting yes, no or present with only yes votes counting toward passing a bill.

By voting present, Obama in effect voted no on a partial birth abortion ban in 1997. In 2001 he voted against parental notification of an abortion by a minor twice. Sadly, he voted against three bills designed to protect the victims of abortion who are “born alive.”

For all the mainstream media’s caricatures of evangelicals as thick browed, ignorant, bitter people who hate science and blindly vote Republican, we’re actually a pretty observant group of people.

We can tell when a politician is shooting us straight and we can tell when they are fishing for votes, telling us about their “faith-beliefs” which somehow never include mention of God or Jesus, but seem to always look eerily similar to the Democratic Party Platform. And we know the Book of Job is in the Old Testament.

McCain was direct and brief with his answers. In fact, Warren worried aloud that they wouldn’t be able to fill the allotted TV time since the answers were so short. But McCain took this opportunity to elaborate by telling stories from his wealth of life experiences, especially his time as a POW in Vietnam.

McCain’s toughest decision he ever had to make? Turning down a North Vietnamese offer of release from captivity. Why did he turn it down? He knew that, since his father was a high ranking U.S. Admiral, his early release ahead of his fellow POWs would be used as a propaganda tool.

McCain’s personal faith? He said he was “saved and forgiven.” Beyond that he recounted that at one point while he was bound in a torture device, a Vietnamese guard loosened his ropes when no one was looking. Hours later the guard came back and tightened the ropes before other guards came to release him. One Christmas Day, that guard stood beside McCain and scratched a cross in the dirt.

Combine McCain’s success at Saddleback with Obama’s failed world tour, along with McCain’s sharp political ads all over the Internet, and you see why Gallup had McCain with a 5 percentage point lead in a national poll last week.

Obama likely got a bump after coverage of the Democrat convention, but McCain came out swinging with his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice president nominee.

A McCain victory is still unlikely, but so was his winning the Republican nomination. McCain seized the strategic initiative at Saddleback and Republicans are hopeful that he may be turning the corner onto 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.



Tar Heel Dispatch is written by Tyler Younts, a first-year law student at Campbell University. Younts, who grew up in Farmer, has a passion for writing and for politics and for writing about politics. E-mail comments to news@randolphguide.com or directly to Younts at younts@email.unc.edu

        

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