You're absolutely right! There. I hope that helps. It should; my judgment is flawless.

Yep. Now please write something about the cross in the sand story.

how bizzare, I just pasted something about that story into an email:

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.../the-dirt-in-the.html

Mainly, the fact that it might not be true. For McCain anyway.

Let's be honest--with the possible exception of that Saddleback forum (on which I hold the minority

McCain and his government by anecdote. Who is probably more entertaining at cocktail parties and picnics? McCain. (provided it is only once or so a year) 4 years of this will be pretty agonizing. Yes, John, I have heard that story about the cross 87 times and I sure as hell don't see how it translates into Government policy.

Death by pith.

Nice to be getting so much rational analysis from Scheiber today. Haven't understood why you've ceded this ground to Ambinder. It's your turf!

to piggyback on Blackton: he's like the charming old guy at a party, whose charm wears thin with repetition as we see the same false- modesty-attempting -to-hide-smile pride every time he brags.

I got sick of the "aren't I so wonderful" smile on a president's face about three months after 9/11. It mortified me to see that look on Bush's face when he was dealing with a national tragedy of such magnitude. I really cannot bear the thought of another four years of that look on my president's face every time he does something he thinks is grand. I saw it plenty from John McCain during the Saddleback conference.

My grandfather had like six really good stories to tell. Looking back, he was a decent and wise man. He also was getting some mild dementia, so he repeated those half dozen stories ad nauseum. They were much less interesting the third and fourth time around. John McCain is like a weaselly version of my grandfather. His stories get old really quick. And if he confabulated one of them, then that really makes one question either his honesty or his mental wellness.

Noam asks "who was the audience?'.  The audience is anybody who watched.  And anybody who sees those soundbites played over and over and over and over.  It wasn't confined to the room (which McCain clearly won and Obama did not..) it was the entire nation.  And in that larger audience, I think McCain clearly won as well.  He was stong and sure and direct.  No ifs, ands or buts.  He was clear about who he was and what he stood for, and as much as we liberal snobs might find the specifics of that distasteful and simplistic, a voting majority of the public may well have found that more impressive than Barack's "nuance".  (They have before.  Ask Jimmy Carter and John Kerry about the political power of "nuance")

Whether he heard the questions in advance or not, John McCain came loaded for bear and treated it as a campaign oppurtunity, a sort of joint "Town Hall" meeting of the type he was been trying to drag Barack into for a couple months now.  Barack treated it like a private conversation that happened to occur in front of congregation of church goers.  He didn't even come to play in the way that McCain did.  And you can't win a fight you don't contest.  If the nation is watching, and it's in the middle of close election campaign, it's political and you need to bring your "A" game, and Barack didn't.  I hope this is not a preview of the debates.

vanwurs, you saw a different one than I did. I just heard the same old soundbites again and again, and all self-serving. How can you call government by anecdote effective? And of course as I mentioned before his most agonizing decision was NOT leaving his wife and kids? No, instead it was not choosing to betray his fellow soldiers by taking advantage of his father's connections.

With McCain, there is nothing behind the stories, no policies, no anything.

I think he did admit how he treated his first wife as his "greatest moral failing", if I'm remembering that correctly.  And the prisoner of war stories are just golden.  He may exploit them, but the man cannot raise his arms over his head because of the torture he endured, and he had an oppurtunity to avoid it if he had only taken it.  You simply can't touch that.  Not Barack's fault, but nothing in his life (or most of our lives....) can compare to that.  

This is the McCain "brand", and it is still strong and when he asserts it, as he did at Saddleback, it still resonates with lots and lots of folks.  Maybe not us New Republic subscribers, but we never got Reagan till way too late either, and he transformed politics and carried 49 states.  McCain looked Reganesqe and Barack looked "Adlai"-esque.  Mostly because he didn't take the oppurtunity to win the night.  A moral feather in his cap, possibly, but a political mistake.  He has not dropped six points in the last two weeks for nothing.

Really the news is that the conservative candidate was a big hit with the conservatives.  And the Democrat was too thoughtful in his responses.  That's prety much how it breaks down.

Yes, moral clarity, black and white, virtue among virtues. Let's take his pronouncements a bit further.

"At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?"

"At the moment of conception," so aside from outright abortions, morning-after pills are illegal too, not to mention the 50% of fertilized zygotes that miscarry.

"What about embryonic stem cells?"

"I've come down on the side of stem cell research," because while embryos are certainly entitled to human rights, let's not get too carried away -- especially if we're talking about melanoma research.

"What do we do about evil?"

"Defeat it. . . my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice." Unless of course he's holed up in a sovereign nation like Pakistan, whose territorial integrity we must respect. We must trust and respect what President Musharaff is trying to do over there (oops!).

"What does your faith mean to you?"

"It means I'm saved and forgiven."  Let me tell you this possibly untrue story about a cross in the sand... have you ever heard of Vietnam?

"What was the most gut-wrenching decision you had to make?"

"It was long ago and far away in a prison camp in North Vietnam..." Aw, shucks, you've probably heard this one a million times! Oh? You don't mind? Well SURE, I don't mind telling it again!

And yes, traytiger, I had that very same (virtually identical...) argement with the television Saturday night.  That being said, in the absense of any counter attack in real time, AT the time, McCain's straightforward, no nonsense, take no prisoners presentation was memorable, effective and politically resonant with a lot of people outside that auditorium.  I don't know why Barack has failed to take him up these joint town forums, I think he could run rings around John McCain and make these very same poiints in contrast.  That would be a debate and McCain could very well run out of steam if he has to keep this McCain impersonation up all night against a sustained counter attack.

But the too cool for school Barack who showed at the Saddleback forum needs to remember that every event is a campaign event, and act like it.  John McCain did.

Vanwurs, while it's true that Obama could have prepared a few more pithy one-liners, I agree with Noam. With the more pointed questions, there was nothing else Obama could do. I thought he effectively stalled on the abortion question so he didn't have to come right out and say "life does not begin at conception." On the more general questions, though, I think he did give a reassuring performance, from an evangelical perspective.

But McCain has an inherent advantage here. His torture experience plays perfectly into the martyr narrative inherent in the evangelical tradition. The whole challenge of evangelism is having the courage to speak up for your faith no matter the consequences.  So it doesn't even matter if McCain *actually* drew upon his faith for sustenance through that trial. Evangelicals connect with that story of sacrifice on a visceral level.  

So, in the end, McCain throws out those tired old stories because he can. With this crowd, it becomes a simple game of throw-and-catch.

As long as this theme of honorable sacrifice dominates the McCain narrative, he's going to sweep the Evangelical vote. This is why it's so important for the Obama campaign to go negative on his ass. They need to shove the honorable meme to the sideline.

The Andrew Sullivan/Daily Kos/New York Times drivel about McCain's cross in the sand story has been debunked by fellow POW, Orson Swindle, who explains he first heard the story from McCain himself in the Hanoi Hilton around 1971.  You know, I am really sick of so-called legitimate news sources printing rumors and innuendos as truth--all this stuff has been discussed in depth by the press for decades and has been substantiated.  McCain didn't just pop on the national scene yesterday (like some politicians).  Why wouldn't these news sources take 5 minutes to check the stories out before running them.  That goes for Andrea Mitchell too.

thetraytiger writes, "...This is why it's so important for the Obama campaign to go negative on his ass. They need to shove the honorable meme to the sideline."

Yeah, well I got news for you, Tiger.  If Obama calls McCain's honor in question it would be the equivalent of McCain subtly playing the race card.

You would see the same kind of outraged shitstorm coming down on Obama as the Obama crowd tries to make rain every time one of them claims to spy "racism" in the air.

So, go ahead, Tigerboy, make our day.

Just saw the constrasting responses of Barack and McCain ("Hardball" is on in the background..) to Rick Warrens "Is there evil in the world question", and I thought Obama's was superior on all levels EXCEPT the political.  But McCain's first example of evil (which, he says, must be "defeated" not merely "confronted" as Barack would have it... with "some humility") was Osama Bin Laden and Islamic Jihadism.  And for the last week he has been exploiting the situation in Georgia as another example of "evil" that must be stood up to.  This is his strength.

But, just as he has fairly successfully turned Barack's "strength" (his capacity to inspire and move millions of people with powerful speeches...) into a liabiility ("mere celebrity") maybe his strength contains an achiles heel as well. In a stand alone presentation, McCain's simple and uncluttered good and evil, black and white, good guys and bad guys world view may be appealing, but once we start examining his penchant to pick a fight with everybody and "stand up" to all the evil in the globe from Iraq to Iran to Afganistan to Russia, then it looks like a perscription for endless war.  Obama's humility might look awful good to a war weary America.   But Barack may have to raise that point in a blunt, not so nuanced way in order to get it across.  Subtlety never won an American Presidential election.

So, as impressive a performance (politically) as McCain gave on Saturday night, it may contain the seeds of his undoing if the Obama campaign works it right.  Take a page from the Republican's  book, accept his politcal virtues for what they are (blunt, straightforward, direct, confrontational, emotional, unreflective, quick triggered,....) and turn them against him.  Is this really the guy you want answering the phone at 3 in the morning?  You want to "defeat" evil everywhere it raises it's head?  In Iraq?  In Iran?  In Georgia?  In the Ukraine?  Is this the future America wants?  Endless war, all the time?  That's where McCain's worldview and temperment (if he means what he says) will take us.

Obama needs to find a way to make "humility" and "cool" and "measured response" look more appealing than "constant struggle" and "defeating evil everywhere" without looking like a wimp.  Perhaps Joe Biden can help with that.

Noam,

Give it up. It is getting hard to take your twited analyses seriously. The reviews that McCain is getting are not based on the responses of the audience there, nor of evangelicals generally. They are based on the responses of exactly the people who were not there and who are not evangelicals--frankly, everyone who saw the forum, taken as a group.. Moreover, Obama's performance there was similar to his lackluster performances in the debates or wherever he has to speak withou a prepared text and a teleprompter

Eos....

Folks might take your analyses more seriously if they didn't always end with some reference to Obama and is inability to speak "without a prepared text and a teleprompter".   Do just recycle old Clinton memos, or what?

Eos....

Folks might take your analyses more seriously if they didn't always end with some reference to Obama and is inability to speak "without a prepared text and a teleprompter".   Do you just recycle old Clinton memos, or what?

Well, for Rick Warren's integrity and what Obama had to work with, note that "Rick Warren tells BeliefNet that Barack Obama is going to have to do more than "talk faith" to win evangelical votes, and compares an evangelical Christian voting for a pro-choice politician to a Jew voting for a Holocaust denier."  

Eos: Winston Churchill, whom Isaiah Berlin called "the largest man in Twentieth Century" and who moved a nation to resist the Nazi tyranny by words alone, never spoke off the cuff and without notes.  Even his "impromptu" jokes were laboured over and worked to death long in advance.  Even if you are right - and I doubt that you are - that he needs notes and teleprompTers means nothing.  And of course, with all the teleprompTers and notes in the world, Shrub sounds like a chimp.  The ability to inspire and to think is not the same thing as being a stand up comedian, otherwise Jerry and not John McCain should be President.

Yo Channy, no one said to call McCain's honor into question. The idea would be to redefine him in other terms, which they're already doing anyway: McCain = Bush III, serial flipflopper, McCain as the real intellectual lightweight in the race, incoherent positions (pro-life at conception + pro-embryonic stem cells), etc etc.

That said, if you guys  are going to get all up in arms every time someone comes near McCain's questionable ethics, it is indeed going to sound as tiresome as the race card.

vanwurs:

I don't know what you are talking about. i don't recall saying anyting about Obama and telepromters before, though I have read other people saying it here recently. Perhaps all critics of Obama seem like the same person to you.

icarusr:

Churchill didn't live in an age of broadband, cable, youtube. The problem is that when Obama can't prepare it before hand, he says stuff that isn't helpful. This wan't Churchill's problem. For example, I found Obama;s answer about his greatest moral struggle (or was it his most difficult decision?)very disturbing: He said it was opposing the war. Could he possibly for a moment believe that himself or think that anyone who was paying the least bit of attention would believe it? When Obama made his famous speech against the war, he was the state legislator for the Hyde Park district--it would have been total political suicide for him to do anything other than oppose the war in Hyde Park, one of the left-most precincts in the US. So his great moral struggle was straightforward political opportunism. Rather off-putting for him to dress it up as a courageous judgment or struggle.

Eos: Does not matter what age Churchill lived in - he was the greatest orator of his age and still had to prepare his speeches and read them off notes.  If that is your criticism of Obama as somehow deficient - then think again.

You might be saying that Obama is not good FOR THE AGE OF internet and stuff. But, in fact, the example you choose has nothing to do with his off the cuff answer as an off the cuff answer: you object to the message not the mode.  This is a different criticism.  As for " So his great moral struggle was straightforward political opportunism."  What can I say.  You know, it is possible to have moral qualms about politically sensitive matters and land on the side that is also politically opportunistic.  I mean, McCain has moral qualms about abortion, and what do you know, his position happens to be politically opportunistic as well.  

Finally, one can have a 'greatest moral struggle' without trying to come across as heroic.  Moral struggles, by definition, are internal; there is nothing heroic about the struggle at all.  Now for Obama to get into that "church" and say he is pro-choice, that took courage.  Give him that at least.  

icarusr:

It is one thing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. It is another thing entirely to suspend all disbelief.

"It is one thing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. It is another thing entirely to suspend all disbelief."

That's just an empty, and somewhat of a cheap, shot.  You start with the proposition that Obama is a cynical pol, you arrive at the conclusion that his moral struggle was cynical.  And any vote or any moral pronouncement of a pol may be dismissed in similar terms.  In any event, let's say he had been a private citizen, with no prospect of harm or benefit as a result of his moral struggle.  Does that negate the struggle itself?

cal80, orson swindle didn't do any such thing. he vaguely recalls the story being told, among other stories and in the past has noted that the POWs including McCain didn't talk about their faith at all. So his "vaguely recall" is hardly the last word.

One of McCain's fellow POWs won't be voting for him:

www.military.com/.../0,15202,164859_1,00.html

I watched the whole thing in my hotel room while at a conference. The story just plain struck me as fishy. But I don't know how that performance gets shown and people continue to see McCain as independent. I am inclined to agree with Jack Cafferty here:

www.cnn.com/.../index.html

Besides, your answer demonstrates that you objected to the message not his supposed inability to speak off the cuff.  This makes your earlier shot even emptier than it appeared at first.

icarusr:

What in the world are you talking about? You're making less and less sense here.  There is no difference between my saying that he is ineffective and gets in trouble when does not have a prepared text and then pointing out an example of exactly that. Maybe you have the opposite problem, i.e. you make more sense in person than you do in a written text?

icarusr:

You write:

"That's just an empty, and somewhat of a cheap, shot.  You start with the proposition that Obama is a cynical pol, you arrive at the conclusion that his moral struggle was cynical.  And any vote or any moral pronouncement of a pol may be dismissed in similar terms.  In any event, let's say he had been a private citizen, with no prospect of harm or benefit as a result of his moral struggle.  Does that negate the struggle itself?"

But no one could really believe that what Obama described as a struggle (to oppose the war as a state legislator from an extremely left distrrict like Hyde Park) had been a struggle, unless you suspend all disbelief, which you are entitled to do if you want to indulge in a a fairy tale. On the other hand, McCain's example of a moral struggle over a decision is entirely credible even to Democrats like me--it was genuinely moving and actually cost him something very dear--three years in captivity. I have a lot of trouble believing that Obama would have made the same decision under those circumstances. Remember how he treated his political sponsor in Chicago? He got her run off the ballot on technicalities found by friends from Harvard Law so that he could take her seat away from her.