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| Author: | Michael J. Gerson, Roger Hertog Senior Fellow |
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August 18, 2008
Washington Post
It is now clear why Barack Obama has refused John McCain's offer of joint town hall appearances during the fall campaign. McCain is obviously better at them.
Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency -- two hours on Saturday night evenly divided between the relaxed, tieless candidates -- was expected to be a sideshow. McCain and Obama would make their specialized appeals to evangelicals as if they were an interest group such as organized labor or the National Rifle Association. Evangelicals would demonstrate, in turn, that they are not rubes and know-nothings. And Americans would turn en masse to watch the Olympics.
What took place instead under Warren's precise and revealing questioning was the most important event so far of the 2008 campaign -- a performance every voter should seek out on the Internet and watch.
First, the forum previewed the stylistic battle lines of the contest ahead, and it should give Democrats pause. Obama was fluent, cool and cerebral -- the qualities that made Adlai Stevenson interesting but did not make him president. Obama took care to point out that he had once been a professor at the University of Chicago, but that bit of biography was unnecessary. His whole manner smacks of chalkboards and campus ivy. Issues from stem cell research to the nature of evil are weighed, analyzed and explained instead of confronted.
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