Redefining Presidential Politics?

We'll see:

Barack Obama won't be asked whether he's patriotic. John McCain won't be asked about his Paris Hilton commercial. They won't be asked how to lower gas prices, either.

When the two presumptive presidential nominees visit Saddleback Church this week, they can expect a very different conversation, one led by pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren.

The candidates will be Warren's guests Aug. 16 at the two-hour Saddleback Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion – their first and only confirmed joint appearance before the party conventions.

"These are friends of mine that happen to be very different in leadership style, philosophy and background," Warren said. "I would like America to get to know them the way I do and make a decision based not on campaign ads that tend to caricature the other guy. I'm going to ask questions that are very different from a lot of the debate and town hall forums."

Warren said typical election topics such as immigration, energy and health care are either outside the president's direct authority or fairly insignificant in the larger scheme of history. Instead, he will ask each candidate about how he leads, makes decisions and sees the world.

The forum will be broadcast live on the church's Web site and be available to television networks, which are still working out technical details. Churches across the country are planning viewing events.

"This will be an interesting experiment," said Diane Winston, a USC professor of media and religion. "It could be a real breakthrough in our political discourse. If Warren is correct and people really want to hear a different political side, and he gets the numbers, it may trigger reporters thinking, 'How are we doing things and do we want to do it differently?'"

Winston said most political coverage focuses on minutiae or the horse race aspect – who is leading in the polls? She said values and ethics matter to Americans regardless of their religious affiliation. But because exploring those issues in sound bites is hard, the topics are overlooked.

"Most Americans want a president who cares about the welfare of the citizens and of the nation," Winston said. "You don't always get an answer to that by reading stories that focus on, 'Is Obama a Muslim?' or, 'Is McCain too old?'"

Warren's approach could draw an audience turned off by mainstream media.

I highlighted the paragraph above because I thought it was a silly statement. Every president "cares about the welfare of the citizens and of the nation". However, the thing that sets the parties apart is how the president shows his "caring". Liberals (i.e. Democrats) think caring means taxes, redistributing wealth and piling failing government programs on top of other failing government programs. Conservatives (i.e. most Republicans but not necessarily John McCain) don't look to government for their solutions. They think government can best "care" for people by getting out of their way, allowing them to keep more of their money, and giving them the freedom to ascend to whatever heights their skills and desire will take them.

As far as that last sentence in the excerpt above, it's pretty much guaranteed that anyone watching this forum will be turned off by the mainstream media since that's where more Americans are these days.

Unfortunately, most Americans are not interested in leadership styles. They're interested in "what's this guy gonna do for me?". I fully expect to hear a litany of government programs that will cost taxpayers a fortune and will yield few if any real results. In today's political world no candidate would dare stand up and say "I'm not going to create new social programs, in fact I'm going to get rid of a bunch of them that have proven to be failures". That would be leadership.