Rick Warren and the Candidates

Just listened to the first part of Rick Warren's forum - where he interviewed/questioned Obama and McCain. The first part was Obama. It was really good - I was impressed with both Obama, and also Warren. Warren put to rest all fears that the forum would be inappropriate, or that he would be a demagogue, etc. He asked the regular questions you'd expect him to, but then he also asked some questions that were very personal to him. It was great, because they were questions that won't ever be asked by anyone else - so it was good to hear him ask them.

Here's the link for the first of six videos for the Obama interview. You can follow each subsequent part from there. Obama made a few good jokes... I'm already 3 minutes into McCain, and he's already made two bad jokes. But that's ok! Humor isn't everything :)

.... update

So it's interesting - McCain's style is very different from Obama's here. Obama was conversational, detailed, and "long-winded". Not in a bad way - he just gave more of an essay. McCain was much quicker and forceful with his answers. I guess it sounded more like a traditional debate response for him than for Obama. And that's not bad either. For one thing, it was easier to figure out what McCain's answer was! It will be interesting to see how both those responses play. McCain's is more accessible, but I felt like I didn't hear anything new. You had to pay a little more attention to Obama, but he had some really great, sincere things to say.

... update 2

GAAAAH I thought I was over blogging about South Ossetia. So McCain just finished talking about that. He's so manipulative in how he talks about it. For example: "there's an oil pipeline that goes across Georgia that up until now was not controlled by the Russians, and energy, my friends, is a tremendous lever that the Russians are using against the Europeans"

On one hand this is true - up until now the pipeline was not controlled by the Russians. However, the pipeline is STILL not controlled by the Russians... go figure. And nice mention of Russia playing hardball with Europe's supply of oil. Too bad to date they've been playing hardball with other pipelines that don't even go through Georgia!

He also cites villages being burned in South Ossetia and people being killed... never mind that its the Georgians that are doing the killings inside South Ossetia. Good Lord! I was liking this forum for awhile...