Last night, both John McCain and Barack Obama took questions from Rick Warren, the evangelical preacher, in a televised forum. The two candidates appeared separately with Obama going first.
Obama’s performance was fine. He was, as Chuck Todd notes, a little rusty. At times his answers were rather ponderous and he was perhaps a touch too causal, it still seems odd to hear a presidential candidate using the phrase ‘screw-up’. He also, surprisingly, lacked a crisp answer to the question of why he wanted to be president.
McCain, though, turned in one of the best performances I have seen him give. His answers were clear and he hit his political message effectively in nearly every one of them. (His one flub came when he suggested that only those earning $5 million or more a year are rich.)
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