Canidates at church

drfong

Did anyone see the forum at Saddleback church last night? What are your thoughts?

ELmostl

it was pretty neat

humanized both of them to me..but..

Obama elaborated too much on all of his answers.

McCain didnt put enough thought behind his..seemed rehearsed. ( i realized he didnt know the questions ahead of time , but he was sayin wat ppl wanted to hear)

harrise

Heh, really brought out the "uhmmm's" from Obama.

Seriously though, forums and debates will do very little to sway me. The difference on the big issues makes my choice clear.

I also don't see many "moderates" on this forum. So I'm guessing you want to see how anyone saw Obama do well?

ELmostl

x2 big issues.

drfong

I completely agree that these types of things do little to influence people who have made up their minds, but I was looking for thoughts on what people saw as how each person did and the forum itself.

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harrise

I stand by my too many "umm's" from Obama. If this is how he reacts the first time under real pressure...

drfong

Well I guess I'll chime in my thoughts.
First I was really suprised by how well John McCain did. I am speaking about performance, not content. If you follow politics you already had a good idea about what they would each say, there was little or no suprise there. But McCain really came across much more at ease and in command of the topics than I expected from seeing some of his responses in the past. Obama always has trouble with off-the-cuff question and answer, he does way better with prepared statements. He seemed much less able to respond to the answers without hesitation and lots of "uhms".

I believe that one of Obama's problems was that he tried to hard to relate issues to his christian faith. I truely believe both the men are christians. I also believe that neither of them are really what I would consider devout. By that I mean that neither of them seem like the type that really look to God in their daily lives. I could be wrong, but you never really hear either of them talking about it in other forums, but he seemed more than McCain to try and relate the issues to faith. That just seems contrived to me.

Lastly the thing I got from this was that John McCain just has much more experience than Barack. Life experience, political experience, whatever. He just seemed to have a better grasp on some of the current issues. Obama can only go back to being against the iraq war for any question, McCain had different stories and experience to relate to the questions.

It is no shock to anyone here that has read any of my political post that I support McCain over Obama, but I'm not a huge mcCain fan either. I was impressed with him in this performance.

harrise

I wasn't an enthusiastic McCain supporter, and still not really excited or anything. He did surprise me a little with his candor. That is definitely his element and surely some democrats were a bit uneasy. For me the "evil" question brought out the real man in each of them.

The best part was the follow-ups on Monday. Obama came out using McCain's jokes and witty remarks as though they were serious answers to the question (the $5mil comment in particular). Either he thinks people are his sheep, or he wasn't listening to McCain's answers. No matter which, it's a fault in how he handles people. If someone wanting to be President can't listen effectively to his opponent, how does he expect me to believe he can diplomatically engage other nations and listen to them?

drfong

I found it funny how many press people kept giving the 5mil answer a tough reaction. It was said as a joke, he followed it up with "but seriously" and even commented that people would give a hard time about it. I have to say I agree with him, 5 million net wealth is rich.

harrise

Looks like it will be an interesting debate season after all.

I um, thought that was why he wouldn't um, take the town hall challenge.

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