In the interest of saying something nice, I tend to agree with Clive Crook that Rick Warren has hopefully raised the bar in terms of how political candidates are interrogated:

I hope the network moderators were taking notes. No self-aggrandizement, no moronic gimmicks, no ceaseless quest for the gotcha moment. He asked good, searching questions in a spirit of urgent reflection, curiosity and goodwill. So it can be done.

But I’d like the bar raised even higher. Questions about the existence of evil, about what was the worst thing a candidate has done in private life, and so on were still fluff, substance-free nonsense that make a Myers-Briggs test seem scientific (which, having taken a few of them, it ain’t.) I did not come away from either “interview” with different impressions or new information or a better sense of how either man would drive the ship of state into the ditch. Maybe because I’ve been paying attention all along (or, to be self-critical, I’m stubborn), but I found that my ideas about McCain and Obama remain unchanged.

If we’re going to make this kind of thing a new ritual, we should open it up to other religions. What does either candidate really know about Islam, the religion so many American policy-makers fear? Or even better, how about that debate on science? Will that ever get off the ground? I would love to see Obama and McCain try to weasel their ways out of direct questions on evolution, stem cell research, global warming, and alternative energy from a strong scientific perspective.

Yeah, I know. Ain’t gonna happen.

Tags: barack obama, john mccain, rick warren

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under In Contempt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.