It Depends On What The Meaning of the Word 'Defeat' Is

I'm a recent college grad and don't yet own a TV. It's times like this past weekend, when Michael Phelps won his 8th gold medal and when Pastor Rick Warren interviewed Senator Obama and Senator McCain, that I remind myself to get my lazy butt to Best Buy.

I'll leave Phelps to another blog. But really, while my feelings about McCain are different, they're just as strong. Especially after Saturday.

San Jose-born Rick Warren is the author of the best-selling book "The Purpose-Driven Life" and is an evangelical pastor of a Lake Forest, CA megachurch. His demeanor is a far cry from Jerry Falwell or other Bible-thumpers – he's direct and firm about his beliefs but has a truly compassionate, down-to-earth approach. He asked the candidates great questions and I really appreciated his openness and hospitality to both Obama and McCain.

One thing that's good about not having a TV is you're forced to scour the web for transcripts and video clips. It really gave me a feel for what the candidates were actually saying as opposed to wincing whenever they stuttered or listening to the TV pundits' takes. I was struck with the differences in the candidates' responses in answer to Warren's question about evil in the world, and I wanted to quote their answers in full here. I promise the difference is striking and it's worth reading.

The question from Rick Warren: was "Does evil exist, and if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it or do we defeat it?"

Here's Obama's response:

Obama: "Evil does exist. I mean, we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil sadly on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who have viciously abused their children and I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God's task. But we can be soldiers in that process and we can confront it when we see it.

"Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, but you know a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil."

 Rick Warren: "In the name of Good?"

 Obama: "In the name of Good. And I think one thing that's very important is having some humility in recognizing that, you know, just because we think our intentions are good doesn't always mean that we're doing to be doing good."

Now check out McCain's answer:

McCain: "Defeat it. Couple points, one, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of Hell, I will get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do that. I will get that done. No one should be allowed to take thousands of American – innocent American lives. Of course Evil must be defeated.

"My friends, we are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century – radical Islamic extremists. Not long ago in Baghdad, Al-Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled and put suicide vests on them, sent them into a marketplace and by remote control, detonated those suicide vests. If that isn't evil, you have to tell me what is and we're going to defeat this evil and the central battleground according to David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden is the battles – is Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq and we are winning and we are succeeding and our troops will come home with honor and victory and not in defeat and that's what's happening. We have – and we face this threat throughout the world. It's not just in Iraq. It's not just in Afghanistan. Our intelligence people tell us Al-Qaeda continues to try to establish cells here in the United States of America. My friends, we must face this challenge. We can face this challenge and we must totally defeat it and we're in a long struggle, but when I'm around the young men and women who are serving this nation in uniform, I have no doubt, none."

Some might say that Obama's answer is nuanced, that yes, America could use some humility in international affairs. But I don't like his use of the word "humility." Oblique Obama is suggesting that going into Iraq wasn't just a strategic or intelligence mistake, but an example of American arrogance. Now we may have been over-confident in the post-Iraq war situation – I'm with Obama on that, if that's what he means. But should we be humble and more soft-spoken or just smarter when we confront the bad guys?

McCain wasn't suggesting that defeating evil means ridding the world of it for all time, which is how Obama chose to see it. McCain riffed on the idea that our duty as Americans is to defeat those explosions of evil that crop up in our time. There will be more, and yeah, God will have to ultimately beat evil and death, but Obama could not just come out and say we should defeat evil at this moment in history.

But the worst was when Obama implied that we – i.e. America – sometimes do evil in the name of good. He didn't get specific here and stayed in the safe realm of philosophy, but he seems to have equated America's invasion of Iraq with that "evil in Darfur," as well as with abusive parents and street criminals. Huh? 

You might have thought that McCain's response sounded a lot like the cowboy-ish "smoke-'em-out-of-their-holes" George Bush. I think McCain isn't a cowboy like Bush, but I'll argue about that on another day. At the very least, in Saturday's interview McCain was straightforward and clear about his goals and America's self-image. Obama kept it vague in order to stay above our heads and insert whatever assumptions we can gather about what he meant.