THE McCAIN PERFORMANCE

Posted at 7:56 p.m. ET

Reader Ray Caldwell, who spent his career serving the United States, refers us to a Michael Gerson column in today's Washington Post, assessing Senator McCain's superb performance in the "faith debate" Saturday night.  It's clear from the rumblings we hear that the Obamans believe their guy got badly beaten, and that Obama really doesn't do well without a written script in front of him.  The debates this fall can be very interesting:

It is now clear why Barack Obama has refused John McCain's offer of joint town hall appearances during the fall campaign. McCain is obviously better at them.

Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency -- two hours on Saturday night evenly divided between the relaxed, tieless candidates -- was expected to be a sideshow...

...What took place instead under Warren's precise and revealing questioning was the most important event so far of the 2008 campaign -- a performance every voter should seek out on the Internet and watch.

They won't, and the mainstream media will bury that debate as quickly as a plot can be purchased.

Obama was fluent, cool and cerebral -- the qualities that made Adlai Stevenson interesting but did not make him president. Obama took care to point out that he had once been a professor at the University of Chicago, but that bit of biography was unnecessary. His whole manner smacks of chalkboards and campus ivy.

And McCain?

The candidate who once seemed incapable of the confessional style of politics talked at length of Vietnam experiences and his adopted daughter from Bangladesh. Asked by Warren about his greatest moral failure, McCain's response -- "the failure of my first marriage" -- had an abrupt and disarming authenticity. The account of his hardest decision -- refusing release from captivity during the Vietnam War ahead of others who had been imprisoned longer -- remains shocking in its valor.

Obama:

Obama's response on abortion -- the issue that remains his largest obstacle to evangelical support -- bordered on a gaffe. Asked by Warren at what point in its development a baby gains "human rights," Obama said that such determinations were "above my pay grade" -- a silly answer to a sophisticated question. If Obama is genuinely unsure about this matter, he (and the law) should err in favor of protecting innocent life. If Obama believes that a baby in the womb lacks human rights, he should say so -- pro-choice men and women must affirm (as many sincerely do) that developing life has a lesser status. Here the professor failed the test of logic.

And the key point:

Obama is one of those rare political figures who seems to grow smaller the closer we approach him. "I want people to know me well," Obama said at the forum. Among religious conservatives, that may not be an advantage.

Finally, McCain's performance at the Warren forum helps change the political psychology going into the conventions. Republicans have spent the past few weeks pleasantly surprised at the closeness of the presidential race. But they have generally chalked this up to Obama's weakness, not McCain's strength. After Saturday night, even Republicans most skeptical of McCain must conclude: "Perhaps we aren't doomed after all."

Of such small hopes are large upsets made.

Yippee!  It is so nice to read that on a Monday night.  It will, though, be a very tough fight.  And the press will do handstands to have its sixties moment.  The disgraceful attempt by some journalists to hint that McCain had improper advance knowledge of Saturday's questions - offering not a shred of evidence - is only an example of what McCain can expect in news coverage this fall.  More on that later or tomorrow morning.

August 18, 2008.