Saddleback forum, part 1
Aug. 19th, 2008 12:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plutherusPart 1: Leadership
The first series of questions, according to Mr. Warren, are about Leadership:
He starts off by quoting "a verse in the bible" which says "fools think they need no advice but wise listen to other people." I can't find this specific verse, but it may be a paraphrase of part of Proverbs 1, verses 5 and 7. Anyway:
Question 1: Who are the three wisest people you know in your life, and who are you going to rely on heavily in your administration?
(He asks this question slightly differently for McCain: "Who are the three wisest people that you know that you would rely on heavily in an administration?")
OBAMA first mentions his wife (because she will tell him when he's wrong) and his grandmother (American success story about a woman who never went to college and worked her way up to becoming a bank vice president. He can't pull off Bush's "gosh shucks, I'm just an ordinary uneducated guy like you all" routine, so offers up his grandmother for those who like that sort of thing. The studio audience apparently does.)
He then goes on the second part of the question and names some names while careful to maintain his bipartisan image, including "There are people like Sam Nunn, a Democrat, or Dick Lugar, a Republican, who I'd listen to on foreign policy. " He immediately brings up one of the most important distinctions between himself and the current president with his summary: "What I found is very helpful to me is to have a table where a lot of different points of view are represented, and where I can sit and poke and prod and ask them questions, so that any blind spots I have or predispositions that I have, that my assumptions are challenged."
MCCAIN, on the other hand jumps immediately to his base in praising the war and extremely partisan general currently in charge of it, "General David Petraeus, one of the great military leaders in American history, who took us from defeat to victory in Iraq." It was good to hear in this forum that we've attained victory in Iraq, because that hadn't made the papers. He also mentions that "Six hundred and eighty-eight brave young Americans, whose enlistment had expired, swore in reenlistment to stay and fight for freedom." 688, out of 150,000. "Only someone like General David Petraeus could motivate someone like that. " Indeed.
Reaching across the aisle, his next hero is John Lewis, who "was at the Edmund Pettis Bridge, had his skull fractured, continued to serve... He can teach us all a lot about the meaning of courage and commitment to causes greater than our self-interest." The Edmund Pettis bridge, in case you were unaware, is in Selma, Alabama, and John Lewis, now a US Representative, was marching for civil rights. So there's more to McCain than just wardrums for the Middle East. Though from the language used, I'm betting most of his supporters think he's talking about an Iraq war hero, and that that's what he intended.
Back to his own party, he names a member of his staff, Meg Whitman, former CEO for Ebay, who left Hasbro to take the tiny internet startup from it's position of only $4 million in annual revenue to the giant powerhouse it is today. From mere millionaire to billionaire, this second-generation industrialist and graduate of Princeton and Harvard is certainly "one of these great American success stories."
Back to Warren for another scriptural misquote "The Bible says that integrity and love are the basis of leadership" (it says no such thing, though it does point out that leadership authority derives from the Will of God and no other source, and often exhorts rulers to be both diligent and compassionate which I guess is similar enough to what Warren claims.) Anyway, that's just a lead-in to:
Question 2: What would be the greatest moral failure in your life? And what would be the greatest moral failure of America?
OBAMA starts off with his drinking and drug use in his teenage years. In contrast to our current president, he takes responbility for his actions, tracing the acts to "a certain selfishness on my part." He then uses this to demonstrate that even today "...when I find myself taking the wrong step, I think a lot of times it's because I'm trying to protect myself instead of trying to do god's work." Now, I would prefer a president to focus on doing the people's work instead of "god's work". But after eight years of dubya, it's pretty refreshing to hear him admit to not only past failure, but identify a cause and indicate that he will be watchful lest is cause future failure as well. I would have liked him to also expound on whether his experiences with drugs would lead him to re-examine America's drug policies and if he thinks it's appropriate for other young users to have their futures taken away with huge jail sentences and never have the chance to grow up and become President of the United States. To say nothing of his policies toward federal intervention in state drug laws. I'm guessing he's not going to continue Bush's policy of using federal force against those involved in growing and distributing medical marijuana in California, but I guess this isn't the kind of question that's going to get asked by a bunch of Evangelicals.
MCCAIN goes with the failure of his first marriage. He indicates no lessons learned, or how this affect his future behavior, ending abruptly with "It's my greatest moral failure." After his first wife stuck by him for so long, waiting for years while he was held prisoner in Vietnam and helping him through extensive rehabilitation necessitated by the torture he subjected to, I can see why abandoning her for one of his mistresses while she was undergoing treatment for injuries from a car accident could be considered his greatest moral failure. And, while that would indicate his character, his role in the Keating Five, or the fact that he's currently in violation of the campaign financing law that bears his name, might be more relevant to the American people at large.
For the second half of the question, Obama points to our lack of care for the poor as America's biggest moral failing, while McCain claims it was our lackluster response to 9/11. Not enough of us did anything to help after that. OK, thanks Mr. McCain, I'll just quickly forget the huge outpouring of volunteers rushing to New York to help in the rescue and cleanup and all the money donated and how the Red Cross got more blood than they could possibly use, and how military recruitment spiked and all that. Now it's true there was a lot of bandwagon patriotism, and a lot of Arab- and Muslim-bashing, and a lot of blatant profiteering and fraud afterward, but he doesn't mention any of that. Nor does he mention the war on civil liberties or the immediate wardrums for Iraq. No, it was the one thing that American's did the most right that he calls our biggest moral failure. Thanks a lot, Mr. McCain. Asshole.
Question 3: Can you give me a good example where you went against party loyalty, and maybe even [went] against your own best interest, for the good of America?
I'm surprised, but these are actually some pretty good questions here.
OBAMA responds to this one by citing his working with McCain himself in campaign financing reform, starting with eliminating gifts from corporate lobbyists. It's a good example, given that, after securing his party's nomination one of the first things he did was convince its leadership to stop accepting gifts from corporate lobbyists. Reminding people of that is a good step. He also opposed the war in Iraq from the get-go which was, as he pointed out, a very unpopular view at the time. Twice going against party loyalty and even his own best interest politically.
MCCAIN first mentions "Climate change, out of control spending, torture, the list goes on, " without mentioning that he has now fallen in line with the Republican mainstream on each of these issues. These would have provided great fodder for the next question, but he doesn't mention them there where they might do some good. He follows up with a quick plug for Ronald Reagan, "one of the great, great presidents in American history -- who won the cold war without firing a shot". After the expected applause, he reveals how he went against him in his decision to send troops into Beirut. He doesn't say it explicitly, but he implies that the source of disagreement is that they didn't send enough troops, not whether or not they should be there in the first place.
Question 4: What's the most significant position you held ten years ago that you no longer hold today, that you flipped on, you changed on, because you actually see it differently?
Interestingly, for McCain, he rewords this slightly:
So give me a good example of something, 10 years ago, you said that's the way I feel about and now, 10 years later, I changed my position. That's not flip-flopping. It's just sometimes growing in wisdom.
OBAMA goes into to his views on welfare reform, how it actually worked out a lot better than he anticipated. He also cites the work he did with the Illinois legislature in making sure that support services for children stayed intact without mentioning explicitly that that may have mitigated some of the damage.
MCCAIN jumps right to "Offshore drilling, we've got to drill now and got to drill here". I'm not sure if this counts, as I don't believe he was ever against off-shore drilling. To be fair, he sees this as only one part of the overall solution, "We've got to do wind, tide, solar, natural gas, hydrogen cars, hybrid cars, electric cars. And we have to have nuclear power in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and save on our energy costs." Good points all. Of course, he can't let a question go by without mentioning the Terrorists, "We're sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much, that some of that money is ending up in the hands of terrorist organizations." and so on.
What's the most gut-wrenching decision you ever had to make and how did you process that to come to that decision?
OBAMA reiterates his opposition to the war in Iraq. He goes into the questions surrounding it and the decisions around them: Yes, Saddam's bad, can we be sure what comes next will be better? How will this affect our separate battle against Al Qaida? Do we really have evidence of WMDs? Will the end result be worth the inevitable deaths of all these young people? And how do we fund the whole thing anyway, and for how long? That sort of thing. The kind of question that you expect a "leader" to "agonize over".
MCCAIN mentions his time in a Vietnamese prison. He had a chance to leave early, before another man who was captured earlier, and didn't take it. "...we had a code of conduct. It said you only leave by order of capture." He stayed. A good example, and according to Wikipedia, this really happened. And his process for coming to that decision? "It took a lot of prayer." His decision was that of a man of honor, there's no disputing that. In this particular case, prayer was really the only avenue open to him. I would, however, hope that the next President of the United States considers possible Earthly ramifications of his actions and gathers opinions of expert advisors before making decisions for all the rest of us.
Tomorrow: How much do the candidates really love Jesus? "World View", abortion, gay marriage and stem cells.
The first series of questions, according to Mr. Warren, are about Leadership:
He starts off by quoting "a verse in the bible" which says "fools think they need no advice but wise listen to other people." I can't find this specific verse, but it may be a paraphrase of part of Proverbs 1, verses 5 and 7. Anyway:
Question 1: Who are the three wisest people you know in your life, and who are you going to rely on heavily in your administration?
(He asks this question slightly differently for McCain: "Who are the three wisest people that you know that you would rely on heavily in an administration?")
OBAMA first mentions his wife (because she will tell him when he's wrong) and his grandmother (American success story about a woman who never went to college and worked her way up to becoming a bank vice president. He can't pull off Bush's "gosh shucks, I'm just an ordinary uneducated guy like you all" routine, so offers up his grandmother for those who like that sort of thing. The studio audience apparently does.)
He then goes on the second part of the question and names some names while careful to maintain his bipartisan image, including "There are people like Sam Nunn, a Democrat, or Dick Lugar, a Republican, who I'd listen to on foreign policy. " He immediately brings up one of the most important distinctions between himself and the current president with his summary: "What I found is very helpful to me is to have a table where a lot of different points of view are represented, and where I can sit and poke and prod and ask them questions, so that any blind spots I have or predispositions that I have, that my assumptions are challenged."
MCCAIN, on the other hand jumps immediately to his base in praising the war and extremely partisan general currently in charge of it, "General David Petraeus, one of the great military leaders in American history, who took us from defeat to victory in Iraq." It was good to hear in this forum that we've attained victory in Iraq, because that hadn't made the papers. He also mentions that "Six hundred and eighty-eight brave young Americans, whose enlistment had expired, swore in reenlistment to stay and fight for freedom." 688, out of 150,000. "Only someone like General David Petraeus could motivate someone like that. " Indeed.
Reaching across the aisle, his next hero is John Lewis, who "was at the Edmund Pettis Bridge, had his skull fractured, continued to serve... He can teach us all a lot about the meaning of courage and commitment to causes greater than our self-interest." The Edmund Pettis bridge, in case you were unaware, is in Selma, Alabama, and John Lewis, now a US Representative, was marching for civil rights. So there's more to McCain than just wardrums for the Middle East. Though from the language used, I'm betting most of his supporters think he's talking about an Iraq war hero, and that that's what he intended.
Back to his own party, he names a member of his staff, Meg Whitman, former CEO for Ebay, who left Hasbro to take the tiny internet startup from it's position of only $4 million in annual revenue to the giant powerhouse it is today. From mere millionaire to billionaire, this second-generation industrialist and graduate of Princeton and Harvard is certainly "one of these great American success stories."
Back to Warren for another scriptural misquote "The Bible says that integrity and love are the basis of leadership" (it says no such thing, though it does point out that leadership authority derives from the Will of God and no other source, and often exhorts rulers to be both diligent and compassionate which I guess is similar enough to what Warren claims.) Anyway, that's just a lead-in to:
Question 2: What would be the greatest moral failure in your life? And what would be the greatest moral failure of America?
OBAMA starts off with his drinking and drug use in his teenage years. In contrast to our current president, he takes responbility for his actions, tracing the acts to "a certain selfishness on my part." He then uses this to demonstrate that even today "...when I find myself taking the wrong step, I think a lot of times it's because I'm trying to protect myself instead of trying to do god's work." Now, I would prefer a president to focus on doing the people's work instead of "god's work". But after eight years of dubya, it's pretty refreshing to hear him admit to not only past failure, but identify a cause and indicate that he will be watchful lest is cause future failure as well. I would have liked him to also expound on whether his experiences with drugs would lead him to re-examine America's drug policies and if he thinks it's appropriate for other young users to have their futures taken away with huge jail sentences and never have the chance to grow up and become President of the United States. To say nothing of his policies toward federal intervention in state drug laws. I'm guessing he's not going to continue Bush's policy of using federal force against those involved in growing and distributing medical marijuana in California, but I guess this isn't the kind of question that's going to get asked by a bunch of Evangelicals.
MCCAIN goes with the failure of his first marriage. He indicates no lessons learned, or how this affect his future behavior, ending abruptly with "It's my greatest moral failure." After his first wife stuck by him for so long, waiting for years while he was held prisoner in Vietnam and helping him through extensive rehabilitation necessitated by the torture he subjected to, I can see why abandoning her for one of his mistresses while she was undergoing treatment for injuries from a car accident could be considered his greatest moral failure. And, while that would indicate his character, his role in the Keating Five, or the fact that he's currently in violation of the campaign financing law that bears his name, might be more relevant to the American people at large.
For the second half of the question, Obama points to our lack of care for the poor as America's biggest moral failing, while McCain claims it was our lackluster response to 9/11. Not enough of us did anything to help after that. OK, thanks Mr. McCain, I'll just quickly forget the huge outpouring of volunteers rushing to New York to help in the rescue and cleanup and all the money donated and how the Red Cross got more blood than they could possibly use, and how military recruitment spiked and all that. Now it's true there was a lot of bandwagon patriotism, and a lot of Arab- and Muslim-bashing, and a lot of blatant profiteering and fraud afterward, but he doesn't mention any of that. Nor does he mention the war on civil liberties or the immediate wardrums for Iraq. No, it was the one thing that American's did the most right that he calls our biggest moral failure. Thanks a lot, Mr. McCain. Asshole.
Question 3: Can you give me a good example where you went against party loyalty, and maybe even [went] against your own best interest, for the good of America?
I'm surprised, but these are actually some pretty good questions here.
OBAMA responds to this one by citing his working with McCain himself in campaign financing reform, starting with eliminating gifts from corporate lobbyists. It's a good example, given that, after securing his party's nomination one of the first things he did was convince its leadership to stop accepting gifts from corporate lobbyists. Reminding people of that is a good step. He also opposed the war in Iraq from the get-go which was, as he pointed out, a very unpopular view at the time. Twice going against party loyalty and even his own best interest politically.
MCCAIN first mentions "Climate change, out of control spending, torture, the list goes on, " without mentioning that he has now fallen in line with the Republican mainstream on each of these issues. These would have provided great fodder for the next question, but he doesn't mention them there where they might do some good. He follows up with a quick plug for Ronald Reagan, "one of the great, great presidents in American history -- who won the cold war without firing a shot". After the expected applause, he reveals how he went against him in his decision to send troops into Beirut. He doesn't say it explicitly, but he implies that the source of disagreement is that they didn't send enough troops, not whether or not they should be there in the first place.
Question 4: What's the most significant position you held ten years ago that you no longer hold today, that you flipped on, you changed on, because you actually see it differently?
Interestingly, for McCain, he rewords this slightly:
So give me a good example of something, 10 years ago, you said that's the way I feel about and now, 10 years later, I changed my position. That's not flip-flopping. It's just sometimes growing in wisdom.
OBAMA goes into to his views on welfare reform, how it actually worked out a lot better than he anticipated. He also cites the work he did with the Illinois legislature in making sure that support services for children stayed intact without mentioning explicitly that that may have mitigated some of the damage.
MCCAIN jumps right to "Offshore drilling, we've got to drill now and got to drill here". I'm not sure if this counts, as I don't believe he was ever against off-shore drilling. To be fair, he sees this as only one part of the overall solution, "We've got to do wind, tide, solar, natural gas, hydrogen cars, hybrid cars, electric cars. And we have to have nuclear power in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and save on our energy costs." Good points all. Of course, he can't let a question go by without mentioning the Terrorists, "We're sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much, that some of that money is ending up in the hands of terrorist organizations." and so on.
What's the most gut-wrenching decision you ever had to make and how did you process that to come to that decision?
OBAMA reiterates his opposition to the war in Iraq. He goes into the questions surrounding it and the decisions around them: Yes, Saddam's bad, can we be sure what comes next will be better? How will this affect our separate battle against Al Qaida? Do we really have evidence of WMDs? Will the end result be worth the inevitable deaths of all these young people? And how do we fund the whole thing anyway, and for how long? That sort of thing. The kind of question that you expect a "leader" to "agonize over".
MCCAIN mentions his time in a Vietnamese prison. He had a chance to leave early, before another man who was captured earlier, and didn't take it. "...we had a code of conduct. It said you only leave by order of capture." He stayed. A good example, and according to Wikipedia, this really happened. And his process for coming to that decision? "It took a lot of prayer." His decision was that of a man of honor, there's no disputing that. In this particular case, prayer was really the only avenue open to him. I would, however, hope that the next President of the United States considers possible Earthly ramifications of his actions and gathers opinions of expert advisors before making decisions for all the rest of us.
Tomorrow: How much do the candidates really love Jesus? "World View", abortion, gay marriage and stem cells.
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question #2
Date: 2008-08-20 04:54 am (UTC)McCain and the other senators met at the Capitol with regulators, first with Edwin J. Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and then members of the FHLBB San Francisco branch, to discuss the government's investigation of Lincoln.[58] McCain would write in 2002 that attending the two meetings was "the worst mistake of my life".[61]