McCain v. Obama

Our Fresh Talk poll this week found that John McCain was a 52% to 33% winner over Barak Obama in our readers' presidential preference, with the balance of voters undecided as of the week ending Aug. 16. Find the Fresh Talk poll archive here.

This week's vote is probably a pretty fair reading of the produce industry as a whole. As a matter of course, more in the trade can be expected to vote Republican over Democrat because of the GOP orientation toward lower taxes and pro-business policies..

Can Obama convince business leaders that he has an economic plan that will lead to prosperity? Is his rhetoric about "change" beginning to wear thin? Can he bring America together on the immigration issue?

Will McCain's advanced age play a role in voters' verdicts? Will the prospect of a "Dr. No" to the expectation of a Democratic Congress in the next Administration bring comfort or angst for the majority of Americans?

One can only hope the race between McCain and Obama brings defining moments in the weeks to come. I have a link to Election 2008 on the blog. Here is their coverage from Saturday's megachurch event:

Barack Obama and John McCain made a rare joint appearance at Rich Warren's huge Saddleback Church in Orange County, CA yesterday. Warren quized each candidate separately about faith, marriage, and evil. When Obama was asked to name his greatest moral failing he cited his drug use as a teenager. When McCain was asked he cited the failure of his first marriage but added President Bush's call for the country to go shopping after Sept. 11 as a moral failure (but conveniently not his). Obama used the event to emphasize over and over that he is a Christian--in part to counter a below-the-radar campaign by some Republican operatives claiming he is a Muslim. When asked when a baby gets human rights. McCain said "at the moment of conception." Obama said the question was "above my pay grade."

When Warren, who has had a long history of preaching about our need to help the poor, asked Obama what his definition of "rich" was, Obama quipped: If you sell 25 million books (which Warren has done), you qualify. McCain said anyone making $5 million a year was rich. That may come back to haunt him in Democratic attack ads that say: "John McCain thinks that if you are making only $4 million a year you're not rich, you're just an ordinary hardworking American." By making a joke, Obama demonstrated his ability to think quickly and not say things that could boomerang. McCain tends to speak his mind (like his remark that being in Iraq for 100 years was OK with him) and some of these quotes provide fodder to the other side.