Rick Warren's Forum: How McCain Won The Battle But Lost The War
By Gary Paul Corcoran - August 18, 2008, 8:11PM
Consider me not surprised. I had been writing a post on that public vetting over at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church on Saturday afternoon when news of John McCain’s subterfuge came over the wire. Well, no wonder, I thought. McCain and his aides were in the limo on the way over and not under the backstage cone of silence, as was intended. They were picking up the particulars of Warren’s questions and Obama’s nuanced answers, allowing McCain to march in and play John Wayne to Obama’s George McGovern. McCain’s going to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell. He’s going to punch all those darned terrorists right in the nose. He’s throwing red meat to the crowd.
Setting aside for the moment Rick Warren’s failure to police these Republican weasels properly, and the fact that we’ve been listening to this same cocksure cowboy bluster about Iraq and foreign policy for the past eight years, I think a broader reverberation from this event may have taken place, the ignoring of which says volumes about what kind of campaign John McCain is running, what kind of President he’d make and confirms for me why I’m so fearful of seeing his finger anywhere near the proverbial red button. Even more to the point, John McCain’s decision to play to the three thousand church members in the audience provided a stunning contrast between Obama’s candidacy and his own and I think offers further hope for our prospects in November. While McCain was willing to gain an unfair advantage by gaming the rules, and was fixated on winning the battle of the pews, he imprudently lost the wider strategic war. Because, let’s face it. Both candidates are preaching to the choir for the most part, until it comes to that ten or twenty percent of swing voters in the middle, and those weren’t the people in the audience.
Understanding this, and displaying all the methodical, farsighted wisdom we witnessed in President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, Obama framed his answers carefully and to the millions of viewers out there in TV land. McCain was channeling General Jack D. Ripper for the front row.
As to the particulars, I found it especially telling when Warren asked “who were the three wisest people each candidate would rely on in their administrations” that Barack immediately mentioned Michelle Obama. Cyndi McCain’s name never came up. McCain instead lauded General Petraeus and mentioned a trip he had made to Iraq last year with Lindsey Graham, blathering on about all those brave soldiers reenlisting to fight for freedom, the same soldiers who happen to be donating to Barack over McCain at a rate of six to one.
McCain then inexplicably threw out Congressman John Lewis’ name as someone he’d seek for advice, I guess just to cover his civil rights’ bases, then went on to laud Meg Whitman, E-bay’s CEO, as a darling of the new economy. Again, McCain had attempted to hit all the high notes, but his thoughts, as always, lacked a coherent thesis, a thing at which he is depressingly like the current President. In contrast, Obama offered this humble but stirring conclusion, proving he remembered the question and actually understood it. The idea of having diverse opinions around you is to be apprised of any blind spots or predispositions a person might possess. Imagine that. Instead of riding out with the cavalry every time new and some unexpected international conflict gets a burr in your saddle, our President might take the time to consider the matter cautiously and make a sound judgment before loading his cannons.
Having downloaded a transcript of the Warren’s event, and pouring over the text the past two days, there are so many points at which I find McCain’s worldview utterly vexing. Where I’m ready to pull out my hair. Where I am reminded that the John McCain of 2000 would never vote for the John McCain of 2008. But more than anything, I found his answer to Warren’s question about evil in this world particularly alarming. Where I had to stop and think, what a jaded and narrow-minded demagogue this old man has become.
Warren had asked, “does evil exist, and if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it or do we defeat it?” Obama answered the first part of the question to the affirmative, went on to explain evil’s many guises, from Darfur to ourselves and our own domestic policies, spoke in terms of “confronting” it but cautioned about the need for humility. A lot of evil has been perpetrated over the years in the name of good.
When asked the same question, McCain, who we now know was peeking from behind the curtain, channels Charlton Heston as Moses in contrast to Obama’s answer. “Defeat it,” he says to a raucous round of applause and with a look as stern as old prophets.
The fact is, McCain never even bothered to address the first part of the question, or to frame his answer in terms other than us against them. It is shocking to think this man can’t get beyond a paradigm in which we are forever at war in this world, today, tomorrow and always. After all, where there is good, there is evil. The fundamental nature of conscious reality is one of duality. Our only hope is to transcend this first cause and to view the world in a brand new way. For there to be any hope, we need to get past this foolish, playground nonsense of us against them, or at least to have a lot less of it.
McCain’s failure to see this or move beyond the worldview of another century is shocking enough, but what really set off my alarms, and should set off alarms in the minds of even so-called devout Christians during this campaign, is that McCain is deluded enough to play God upon the stage of this world.
I refer to the Bible.
See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil. Deuteronomy 30:15.
I don’t mean to be cute here and remain unsure whether or not one can possibly call upon logic in these circumstances, but if evil is God’s handiwork, who are we to think we can rid the universe of it? To take the Bible at face value, as I expect John McCain and most Christians do, isn’t it the worst form of demagoguery to suggest we can undo the very nature of the world as God created it? Better what Obama had to say when asked the same question. All we can do is be God’s humble soldiers in that ongoing struggle.
But what the hell. If John McCain’s going to play at God, why bother with channeling that old fire and brimstone God of the Old Testament. Didn’t Jesus say he had come to fulfill the old law? So let’s hearken to something on the subject that is closer to the true spirit of Christianity.
…Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7
How fitting it would be if a forum held at a Christian
church in America today would lead us to love as the proper way to
marginalize evil in this world. How miraculous it would be if John McCain could
find that part of his Christian soul, instead of offering us more wars and destruction
and bellicose words.
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