Bethany Village and the VP Debate

Tonight I gave a talk at Bethany Village, a local Methodist retirement home in Mechanicsburg, PA. I believe that this was the sixth talk that I have given there. The main reason I keep coming back to Bethany Village is the people who reside there. (And the fact they keep inviting me back!) The residents are very engaged and always prepared with well-informed questions.
My talk tonight was entitled “A Short History of Religion and Politics in America.” I chose to focus on a few presidential elections in which religion played an important role. We discussed the Federalist attacks on Jefferson’s religion in 1800, William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold Speech” in 1896, Al Smith’s failed 1928 campaign as the first Catholic candidate, John Kennedy’s famous Houston religion speech in 1960, and the Bush-Rove appeal to evangelicals in 2000 and 2004. I ended with some reflections on the major role religion has played in the 2008 campaign, discussing Obama and Reverend Wright, Sarah Palin’s Pentecostalism, Mike Huckabee’s southern evangelicalism, Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, and the Compassion Forum at Messiah College and Rick Warren’s Saddleback Forum.

I tried to end my talk before 9pm eastern time so that the residents could get to their television sets to watch the vice-presidential debate. I thought Sarah Palin was well-spoken tonight and I am sure her folksy “dog-gone its,” “ya’s,” and winks to the audience probably won her points with her base and annoyed her opponents. She did not make too many major blunders, but she did not say too much outside of the McCain talking points. She seldom answered the questions posed to her, preferring instead to fall back on her role as a small town Alaskan mayor and governor, her stump speeches, and whatever other things the McCain campaign prepped her to say. This was obviously her strategy–to answer the questions she wanted to answer. I was surprised to hear her interest in having more legislative power for the vice-president, a proposal that Joe Biden countered with some shaky U.S. Constitutional history (he confused Article 1 and Article 2 and misrepresented the role of the V.P. as president of the Senate) and an assertion that Dick Cheney was the most dangerous Vice-President ever.

I am now watching Pat Buchanan on MSNBC who claims that Palin “wiped up the floor with Biden” in the debate. He claims that she has returned to her Republican convention popularity. Frankly, I am not sure what debate Buchanan was watching.

Now I am over at FOX News watching a focus group of thirty people, most of whom seem to think that Palin won because she “connected” with the American people in a more effective fashion than Biden.

Biden managed to control himself and displayed a much greater knowledge of the issues than Palin. He rarely challenged Palin for not answering the questions posed to her. Whether you like him or not, Biden knows what he is talking about. He can talk about McCain’s votes on the senate floor because he was there. This was another clear example of the level of Palin’s unpreparedness for the presidency should something happen to John McCain. If one votes entirely on the “hearbeat away” issue, I cannot see how anyone can conceivably pull the lever for McCain-Palin. She may have “connected” with the American people, but she said virtually nothing in terms of policy and issues.

Let the spin begin.