obama mccain forum

At about 9 p.m. Eastern time, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain briefly crossed paths in a rare moment in the presidential campaign (the Senate floor doesn’t count, and besides, neither of them has been there much lately). They shared the stage for 36 seconds at Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch here, where they briefly hugged each other and smiled, belying a nastier campaign between them that has taken place long-distance and over the airwaves. (Related Article | Transcript, via rickwarrennews.com | Video Excerpts, via MSNBC)

Tonight’s encounter, marked the unofficial opening of the general election and serve as a prequel to the fall debates as the two candidates discussed, although not simultaneously, a range of faith-related, character, leadership and humanitarian issues. Our colleague Michael Luo has more on tonight’s host, the Rev. Rick Warren, here.

Mr. Warren first interviewed Mr. Obama for an hour (with commercial breaks). Afterward, Mr. McCain came on stage. For a brief moment, the two candidates greeted one another, shaking hands. Mr. Obama then left while Mr. McCain began his own hour with Mr. Warren. During Mr. Obama’s session, Mr. McCain was not be able to hear the questions or answers since he was to be asked more or less the same ones. The Reverend Warren joked at the start of the forum that Mr. McCain was in “a cone of silence.” (Update: More on this here.)

Mr. Warren asked Mr. Obama which of the sitting Supreme Court justices he would not have appointed. He 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.

He also named Justice Antonin Scalia, who he said was a brilliant legal thinker, but whose legal views he does not share. He also recalled that he had voted against the confirmation of John G. Roberts as Chief Justice and said that judgment had been confirmed by a number of Roberts decisions that, Mr. Obama said, improperly expanded executive authority at the expense of Congress and the judiciary.

“One of the most important jobs of the Supreme Court is to guard against the encroachment of the executive branch on the power of the other branches,” Mr. Obama said. “I think he has been a little bit too willing or eager to give an administration, whether mine or George Bush’s, more power than the Constitution originally intended.”

Asked to name an instance in which his thinking had changed over the past 10 years, Mr. Obama cited the 1996 welfare reform bill signed by former President Clinton. He said he opposed the measure at the time because he believed it would have “disastrous results,” denying millions of women economic support without providing them with job training, child care or health benefits. He said he now believes the law has been largely successful.

“It worked a lot better than a lot of people anticipated,” he said. He then added, speaking more broadly, “I am absolutely convinced that we have to have work as the centerpiece of any social policy.”

Mr. Warren, who has made millions of dollars on his books, including the best-selling “The Purpose Driven Life,” asked Mr. Obama to define “rich.”

Mr. Obama responded impishly, “Well, if you’ve got book sales of $25 million . . . ” Mr. Obama, too, has made millions from his books. Mr. Warren reached across the desk and gave Mr. Obama a high five.

The candidate then said that under his tax plans all American families making less than $150,000 a year are considered middle class or poor and would receive a tax break. Families making more than $250,000 a year, the top 3-4 percent of Americans, would would have to pay what he called a “modest” increase in taxes.

“These things are all relative” he said. “I’m not suggesting that everybody making more than $250,000 a year is living on easy street.”

After Mr. Obama was up, it was Mr. McCain’s turn. On the applause-o-meter, Mr. McCain received the more rousing response from the audience, made up largely of church members here in Orange County, one of the most conservative areas in the country. He told more anecdotes but also filibustered more. One of the few points when Mr. McCain left the audience silent was when he said he favored stem-cell research.

The Reverend Warren asked Mr. McCain what his greatest moral failure is. Mr. McCain responded that he himself is an imperfect person and his greatest moral failure was “the failure of my first marriage.” Mr. McCain rarely ever mentions his first marriage. Mr. McCain said the nation’s greatest moral shortcoming is its failure to ”devote ourselves to causes greater than our self-interests.” When asked the question earlier, Mr. Obama had referred to his “difficult youth” when, he said, he experimented with drugs and drank. “I trace this to a certain selfishness on my part,” he said. “I couldn’t focus on other people.”

Asked when a baby was entitled to human rights, Mr. McCain said it was at the moment of conception and added that he would be a “pro-life President” with “pro-life policies.”

Mr. McCain was also asked which of the sitting Supreme Court justices he would not have appointed. He named four — two nominated by a Democrat and two by a Republican: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter, John Paul Stevens. (Though as several readers pointed out, Mr. McCain did vote to approve the nominations of Justices Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg.) He said that there might be several vacancies soon. “This nomination should be based on the critera on a proven record of strictly adhering to the Constitution and not legislating from the bench,” Mr. McCain said.

Asked to define marriage, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama both said that they believed marriage is a union between a man and a woman.

“For me as a Christian it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama said he opposed a constitutional amendment defining marriage that narrowly, saying the question traditionally had been left to the states. And he also said he supported homosexual civil unions, saying, “For gay partners to visit each other in the hospital I don’t think limits my core beliefs about what marriage is.”

Mr. McCain said courts in California were wrong to approve gay marriages but also said somewhat vaguely that that “doesn’t mean people can’t enter into legal agreements.”

On the question of an instance in which his thinking had changed over the past 10 years, Mr. McCain pointed to off-shore drilling. “We gotta drill now; we gotta drill here,” he said, and took a poke at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, 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.

The church itself rises in the desert and is surrounded by palm trees and dusty mountains, but it’s hard to tell it’s a church. In fact, inside, it looks more like a giant warehouse, than traditional religious sanctuaries. The hosts treated the forum as a major live television event. A woman who was introduced as tonight’s “stage manager,” told the audience to be sure to give Mr. Warren a hearty round of applause when he appears, and to save their bathroom visits for commercial breaks.

The event reflects the importance of religion in American life and, increasingly, in politics. It also marks the coming of age of a broader brand of evangelicalism that is more socially minded and more diverse than the orthodox religious movement of the Christian right.

The two candidates have been lobbing long-distance attacks at each other for weeks now, but any encounter in person here that is less than cordial would come as a surprise. This is not a debate with partisans cheering from the sidelines; it is a sanctuary. Game face is not only not required, it is discouraged.

Mr. Warren, who personally arranged the meeting through cellphone calls to the candidates, both of whom he knows, said in a statement that his conversations would focus on how they make decisions and what kind of leaders they would be.

“Leadership involves far more than promoting programs and making speeches, and since no one can predict what crises will happen over the next four years, it is vital to know the decision capacity and process of each man,” he said. He also said he wanted to avoid “partisan ‘gotcha’ questions that typically produce heat instead of light.”

Mr. Obama has demonstrated a comfort level in religious spheres, while Mr. McCain rarely expresses his religious views in public. Mr. Obama also has an extensive religious outreach program, and polls show that he leads Mr. McCain among many religious denominations, with the notable exception of evangelical Christians.

Mr. Warren, who consulted with several others about the kinds of questions he might ask, also received lots of unsolicited advice from the blogosphere, much of it about abortion. An open letter posted on RedState.com, for example, urged him to ask Mr. Obama about the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which bans the killing of a fetus born with signs of life, whether or not it was born during an abortion. (As a state legislator in Illinois in 2003, Mr. Obama opposed such a ban, saying it was legally flawed.)

Mr. Warren’s ministry has made a name for itself by focusing beyond such issues, to the displeasure of some traditional evangelical Christians who say he is diluting the movement. How much he dwells on abortion tonight could signal the degree to which the movement is changing.

The event was produced by the church itself because the candidates did not want it to be sponsored by a television network or moderated by a television personality, according to Whitney Kelley, a spokeswoman for the church.

Their other criteria, she said, included that Mr. Warren be the sole questioner, without a panel and without questions from the audience.

The church, the fourth-largest in the country with a membership of 22,000, seats 3,000 people. But it had to rip out 1,000 seats to accommodate the media and its production crews and to provide a security buffer between the audience and the stage, Ms. Kelley said.

The church polled its members to determine whether to charge for the remaining seats to help recoup its costs, expected to run into hundreds of thousands of dollars (just like a presidential debate). The members agreed, and the ticket price was set at $100 each. Ticket preferences were given to charter members of the church, which held its first service in 1980, and to its volunteers; each campaign will also have a block of seats.

But even the $200,000 from ticket sales will “fall short” of the final price tag, said Mark Affleck, executive director of Saddleback’s Peace Plan, a program to help position the Christian church as a leader in relief and developmental work around the world. The church takes in $27 million a year in tithes and offerings.

Mr. Affleck said that Saddleback’s goal in staging this event is “to restore the church’s primacy in society and not be off on the sidelines, to be a part of the world and all the issues.” He added: “It’s a way to use the platform that God has given Rick and the church to be a leader and bring everyone together, not have the church be over there and separate.”

Reflecting the mainstream quality of the event, there will be commercial breaks. Each candidate is to speak for three segments of 11 minutes each and one segment of 12 minutes.

One of those commercials was from a Christian group, the Matthew 25 Network, which has endorsed Mr. Obama.

And in a taste of things to come, Bob Barr, who is running for president as a libertarian, has protested his exclusion from the event. A federal district court has ruled that the church did not have to let him participate. Mr. Barr is likely to raise the same issue with the commission on presidential debates.