John McCain and Barack Obama shared the stage briefly at a forum held by the Saddleback Church. It was largely a pro religious-right crowd. This from the NY Times:
Asked what their biggest moral failings were, Mr. Obama referred to his “difficult youth” when, he said, he experimented with drugs and drank alcohol. “I trace this to a certain selfishness on my part,” he said. “I couldn’t focus on other people.”
Mr. McCain pointed to his first marriage, which he almost never does publicly.
- Mr. Warren asked Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, which of the sitting Supreme Court justices he would not have appointed. Mr. Obama quickly named Justice Clarence Thomas, saying he was not qualified for the top court at the time.
“I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of the Constitution,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, named all the liberal judges on the court and noted that there might be several vacancies soon. “This nomination should be based on the criteria on a proven record of strictly adhering to the Constitution and not legislating from the bench,” he said.
Asked what was the most significant issue he had changed his mind on in the last 10 years, Mr. Obama cited the 1996 welfare reform bill signed by President Bill Clinton. He said that he initially opposed it because he believed it would have “disastrous results,” denying millions of women economic support, but that he now believed the law had been largely successful.
Mr. McCain pointed to offshore drilling. “We’ve got to drill now; we’ve got to drill here,” he said, and took a poke at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican of California, who opposes it. “I know there are some here in Cal-eee-fornia that disagree with that position,” he said, mimicking the governor’s accent.
- Mr. Obama skirted a question about when life begins, saying that determining such a thing was above his pay grade and sending murmurs throughout the audience. Mr. McCain said simply, “At the moment of conception.”
- Asked to define marriage, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain gave the same answer: that it is the union between a man and a woman.
- On abortion, Mr. Obama declared: “I am pro-choice, I believe in Roe vs. Wade, not because I’m pro-abortion but because ultimately I don’t think women make these decisions casually.” He also said, “I am in favor on limits on late-term abortion if there is an exception for the woman’s health.”
Mr. McCain said he was “pro-life” and would be a “pro-life president.”
This from the Dallas Morning News:
Mr. Obama said the biblical injunction to care for the disenfranchised “applies to poverty, it applies to racism and sexism, it applies to not thinking about providing ladders of opportunity for people.”
Mr. McCain recalled how his religious faith sustained him in the face of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
“It took a lot of prayer,” he said.
- “If I’m president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice,” he said.
- Asked their most difficult decision, Mr. Obama recalled his vote against the war in Iraq. Mr. McCain cited his decision to refuse early release as a POW.
East Texas evangelist Rick Scarborough, president of Vision America Action, said Mr. McCain offered concise, conservative answers that should help win over religious voters.
He took Mr. Obama to task for not answering when life begins.
“This brilliant Harvard grad could not say the obvious,” said Mr. Scarborough. “He’s the most radically pro-abortion candidate our country has ever fielded.”
- Richard Land, who heads the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that although Christian conservatives are lukewarm about Mr. McCain, most will vote for him in November because they find Mr. Obama unacceptable.
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