Campaign 2008From The Trail
NBC/National Journal embed reporters file regular dispatches on their experiences from the trail.

Previously in this series:
• Faith Forum Fits With Obama's Religious Outreach (08/18/08)
• For McCain, Change Begins With A 'No' (08/12/08)

Read The Entire Series

NEW ORLEANS -- John McCain is famous for his somewhat rocky relationship with the religious right. But speaking to nearly 3,000 members of that community on Saturday at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was frank and concise.

Some had paid as much as $2,000 to sit in on influential evangelical pastor Rick Warren's Civil Forum on the Presidency featuring McCain and Democratic counterpart Barack Obama. The forum was advertised as an analysis of each candidate's leadership, stewardship, world view and feelings on international compassion.

Warren was "very careful to say this is not going to be a Christian litmus test for president," said Larry Ross, a spokesman for the event. "These guys run for president, not the priesthood, and yet there are some moral aspects to some of these questions."

Warren, widely known simply as "Pastor Rick," did indeed phrase his questions a bit differently than the average pundit, including such open-ended queries as, "Define 'rich,'" and, "What is worth dying for?"

From Obama, who spoke first while McCain was off stage, the audience in the church and watching on television watching heard thoughtful, nuanced responses; some were long enough that at one point the pastor reminded his guest that when he picked up his note cards it was time to move on to the next question.

For McCain, the experience was much different. Besides the retelling of a few of his favorite stories, McCain's answers were mostly to the point. When asked what being a Christian meant to him, McCain simply said it "means I'm saved and forgiven." He then launched into a well-worn story about a guard in his North Vietnamese prison camp who once drew a cross in the sand at Christmas time.

"For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshiping together," McCain said.

When asked at what point a baby is entitled to human rights, McCain said "at the moment of conception," to resounding applause.

"I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate, and as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies. That's my commitment," he continued, and that was all. No intellectualizing, no equivocation.

"OK, we don't have to go longer on that one," Warren remarked.

Warren promised his audience that the presumptive GOP nominee was being kept in a "cone of silence" while Obama was being interviewed. Rumors were later floated that the Arizona senator might have had unfair advance notice of the questions. But Ross said that both candidates had received broad guidelines on Warren's direction as well as a few sample questions.

The crowd responded to McCain. Partly because of the Lake Forest area's Republican orientation (Orange County has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Franklin Roosevelt's second term), many of those in the audience left feeling more comfortable with McCain than with his opponent.

"I know I'm biased going in there, but I think McCain will pick up a couple points," said Jon Fasola, who attended the event. Although he said the event had "humanized" Obama, Fasola added that the Illinois senator had "long answers but not that much content."

Devin Daniels, a McCain supporter whose wife works at one of the Saddleback's satellite campuses, said that McCain "was a little more engaging with the crowd than Obama was. Maybe that's because it's Orange County. It's more conservative."

"I'm going to vote for him regardless," Daniels said, but he added that he still found Obama to be impressive. "I just disagree with a lot of his fundamental beliefs about the direction of this country."

One of the biggest differences that Daniels saw between the candidates was their answer to Warren's first question. "Who are three wisest people you know in your life, and who are you going to rely on heavily in your administration?" the pastor asked each candidate to kick off their hour.

Obama seemed immediately drawn to the first part of the question, pointing to his wife and his grandmother as two of the wisest people he knows and then going into how he would "approach the presidency."

"I don't think I'd restrict myself to three people," Obama said, before listing former Sen. Sam Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia, and current Senate colleagues Richard Lugar, R-Ind., Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla. "What I've found is very helpful to me is to have a table where a lot of different points of view are represented, and where I can sit and poke and prod and ask them questions."

McCain, on the other hand, immediately dove into how his policy decisions might be made as president, identifying Gen. David Petraeus, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as three people he would rely on heavily.

After the event, both Daniels and Fasola brought up the candidates' answers to that question almost immediately. The two McCain supporters had very different opinions on their candidate's answer.

Fasola said that he didn't want a president who was going to ask his wife and grandmother for advice on tough policy questions, and thus McCain had shown himself to be a good leader. Daniels, on the other hand, said, "it was very interesting how Obama pulled from personal people."

"Maybe Obama's more of a family man, and holds that more dear -- their opinions," Daniels said.

Family values have traditionally been a priority for religious voters, and perhaps based on that, the audience seemed to warm up to the Democrat. In the end, however, the mostly conservative county provided an audience that was true to political form -- and maybe the two campaigns knew that.

After Obama's hour-long session, his press corps was rushed out of the auditorium and onto a plane departing for Reno, Nev., before McCain had finished his turn. The McCain press corps arrived more than an hour before Obama took the stage, plenty of time to see the pastor's questioning of both candidates and the audience's selection of a de facto winner.