June 05, 2007
Finding Their Religion
Democrats want voters to know that Republicans don't have a monopoly on religion, so the Christian group Sojourners partnered with CNN to give the party's top-tier presidential candidates a chance to burnish their faith-based credentials.
CNN's Soledad O'Brien moderated the hour-long forum featuring front-runners John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, in that order, at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium yesterday evening. Each candidate was given 15 minutes to respond to a series of questions from O'Brien and a panel of religious figures sitting in the audience. Edwards made it all the way down the panel, while Obama was only able to field one.
When Edwards took the stage, O'Brien intimated that he might just "own" the crowd -- perhaps because in addition to faith and values, poverty was a central topic of conversation. Not surprisingly, the candidate called as much attention as he could to his background on the issue.
Sojourners founder Jim Wallis first broached the topic by praising Edwards for pointing out that in Sunday night's New Hampshire debate, the American poor "never came up." Edwards twice said, "this is the cause of my life" and proceeded to tick off his efforts to combat the issue in the country and around the world. He spoke of the matter not unlike the way former Vice President Al Gore does about global warming.
"Everything I can do -- everything in my power that I'm able to do -- I will do to drive the issue of poverty in this presidential campaign, so that everyone is required to talk about it, because I think it is the great moral issue of our time," he said. He later added: "This is such a part of my life, that whatever happens in this presidential campaign, as long as I am alive and breathing, I will be out there fighting with everything I have to help the poor in this country."
Edwards worked in a slight dig at Obama when he got down to specifics about how he would pursue rooting out poverty by reiterating that he wants the country to achieve "true universal health care" -- something that Edwards claims Obama's plan does not do. And he discussed where his own "faith journey" has taken him, pointing out how personal tragedies, including his son's death and his wife's cancer, have affected him.
There were lighter moments too, and Edwards managed to get in a couple of well-received one-liners -- including his response when O'Brien asked what his biggest sin has been. "I don't like how this is starting," he chuckled, before answering about how he sins every day.
Reactions to Obama were decidedly less enthusiastic once he got down to business and started pontificating on the intersection of religion and policy. The lack of applause lines didn't necessarily reflect a negative reaction from the crowd; it was more that the audience was trying to understand where the pensive senator was going.
Obama is not off to a good week with the press so far, and it's only Tuesday. The Las Vegas Sun reported that the crowds coming out to see him are smaller, and a press release for Harris Interactive's latest poll on White House hopefuls was headlined, "Just One-Third of U.S. Adults Would Vote for Barack Obama if He Was the Democratic Nominee for President."
Perhaps to counter the stack of stories accumulating about whether he's thick on style and thin on substance, Obama took the occasion to opine on a handful of domestic policies when asked by Wallis what he would do about working against poverty in the country. His lengthy remarks left O'Brien mildly amused, if not slightly exasperated.
Clinton's stylings during the session were somewhere in between Edwards' and Obama's. Though she chose to avoid the references to "my Lord" that Edwards was keen on, she was forthright about how her faith has played a part in her life. Headlines this morning reflected her acknowledgment that she couldn't have gotten through the infidelity in her marriage without her faith. But she took a bold move by matter-of-factly stating: "I come from a tradition that is perhaps a little too suspicious of people who wear their faith on their sleeves." She went on: "A lot of the talk about and advertising about faith doesn't come naturally to me."
Like Edwards, she worked in a couple of funny lines, too. When asked what she prays for, she quipped that it depends on what time it is. "Sometimes, I say, 'Oh Lord, why can't you help me lose weight?'" she said to a round of laughter before ticking off a more serious list.
But Clinton didn't stray from policy and social positions, either. Asked if she could work with activists in the pro-life camp to find common ground, she offered a hearty yes and repeated her now-familiar line that she is after an atmosphere in this country where abortions are "safe, legal and rare," insisting, "and by rare, I mean rare." She also asserted several times that a number of institutions have failed to reach out to young people effectively on the issue and that "we've all failed" in coming together on the subject.
At the beginning of the forum, Wallis said that "the people of God should never be in the pocket of any political party or candidate" in explaining why his organization would not be issuing an endorsement. Indeed, he plans to host another forum with CNN in the fall with three as-yet unnamed Republican candidates.
Posted at 10:17 AM
Posted to:
Barack Obama, Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, WH 2008
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