Both Barack Obama and John McCain did well in Rick Warren’s forum, though McCain was clearly a crowd favorite as he was able to repeat conservative talking points to a mostly conservative crowd. He’s also no longer shy about discussing his time as a POW and he took many opportunities to bring that up. Obama also received plenty of applause, but he had to deal with questions on issues where he disagreed with evangelicals.
Warren had some interesting questions, but he never asked a follow-up question. If he asked a tough question, each candidate could say whatever they liked, because Warren didn’t want to play “gotcha.” In one sense that made it a civil conversation, but both candidates were able to say things without any fear of having the questioner challenge them, and that led to “stump speech” answers that weren’t very enlightening. McCain was able to ham it up with the conservative audience and basically tell them what they wanted to hear.
It will be interesting to see how this plays. Obama came across as thoughtful, but McCain really used it as a campaign event to beef up support with evangelicals. He probably scored points with conservatives, though independents might have been turned off by some of his answers. He drew a very hard line on abortion, which might hurt him with independent women.
