Minor Thoughts from me to you

Barack Obama didn't do so well at Pastor Rick Warren's forum Saturday night. How did the Obama campaign react? By whining and claiming that somebody else cheated:

I've been looking into all this buzz that McCain somehow cheated -- that he wasn't in a "cone of silence" -- during Barack Obama's half of the Saddleback summit Saturday night. The talk got started on "Meet the Press" yesterday, when Andrea Mitchell said, "The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well prepared."

Ah, yes. Because -- of course -- the only way to be "well prepared" for an event is to cheat. It can't be that one candidate has more life experience than the other. It can't be that one candidate is a good enough politician to know what kinds of questions to expect and to prepare accordingly. No. The other candidate must have cheated.

Even if it were true, whining isn't the right response. When you're auditioning for the job of "leader of the free world", you should expect everyone else to cheat. You should expect that other world leaders will often attempt to mislead you. You should expect others to gain the upper hand through devious means. Whining just means that you can't operate under normal conditions.

Except that McCain didn't even cheat.

As far as the McCain side is concerned, I spoke to Charlie Black a few minutes ago. He told me McCain's motorcade left his hotel at 5 p.m. Saturday -- that's the time Obama went on stage at Saddleback. Black told me the trip took 35 minutes, and that McCain was in the car with the Secret Service guys, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and press aide Brooke Buchanan. (Black was in another car.) Black says that McCain did not hear any of Warren's questions or Obama's answers during the car ride. Then: "We arrived at Saddleback and went into a holding room, which is a separate building from the main church. In the room there were four or five staff people, plus McCain, and there was no TV, no audio, no nothing. We talked through a few of the topics. We had spent time in the afternoon preparing, doing Q&A, and we did a few more questions to warm him up. At about ten til six, the advance guys came to get McCain to take him to the stage, because the handshake with Obama was a few minutes before 6 p.m. McCain never heard any of this stuff."

Tell me again why Senator Obama is ready to lead? Right now, he seems to fit in well with kindergarteners. Give me a call when he's moved up a few grade levels.