{"id":165,"date":"2008-08-16T23:16:58","date_gmt":"2008-08-16T23:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/08\/the-verdict.html"},"modified":"2008-08-16T23:16:58","modified_gmt":"2008-08-16T23:16:58","slug":"the-verdict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/08\/the-verdict.html","title":{"rendered":"The Verdict on the Saddleback Forum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I thought Obama was very good. He spoke about his faith in a humble, convincing, personal way. He showed himselt to be neither Muslim nor a black liberation theologist (as James Dobson put it).  His abortion answer was okay. His answers about welfare reform (admitting he was wrong), Iraq (casting it as an anguished decision) were both strong.<br \/>\nBut McCain was spectacular.  His sharp, direct answers were dramatic, compelling and, in hindsight, made Obama seem overly nuanced and qualified.  He used his POW stories brilliantly, whacked Islamic terrorism, hit abortion hard, and gave evangelicals great cause to embrace him more enthusiastically.<br \/>\nTo me the main reason evangelicals havent cottened to McCain has less to do with him than the Republican Party and the Iraq war.  If Obama makes any headway with evangelicals it will be because of that.   If Obama gains from this evening, it will be because he&#8217;s been sufficiently demonized that the man who showed up tonight (moderate-sounding, reasonable, humble) contrasted so dramatically with the caricature of him as a Muslim, elistist, black radical.<br \/>\nThe other big winner was Rick Warren.  His questions were so much better than what the journalists normally ask.  I particularly liked when he acknowleged that we wanted politicians who change their minds sometimes. What a contrast with the pundits who focus entirely on flip-flop gotcha games. He did not ask about favorite bible versus, focusing instead on probing questions about their values, influences and leadership styles.  This debate enhances his stature, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought Obama was very good. He spoke about his faith in a humble, convincing, personal way. He showed himselt to be neither Muslim nor a black liberation theologist (as James Dobson put it). His abortion answer was okay. His answers about welfare reform (admitting he was wrong), Iraq (casting it as an anguished decision)&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Verdict on the Saddleback Forum - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/08\/the-verdict.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Verdict on the Saddleback Forum - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I thought Obama was very good. He spoke about his faith in a humble, convincing, personal way. He showed himselt to be neither Muslim nor a black liberation theologist (as James Dobson put it). His abortion answer was okay. His answers about welfare reform (admitting he was wrong), Iraq (casting it as an anguished decision)&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/08\/the-verdict.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-16T23:16:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Verdict on the Saddleback Forum - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/08\/the-verdict.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Verdict on the Saddleback Forum - Steven Waldman","og_description":"I thought Obama was very good. 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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