Lies at Faith Town Hall?

I was impressed with Obama at the Saddleback Church presidential candidate event. He was thoughtful and humble and gave smart intelligent answers.

McCain came out and gave his best public performance this year. He seemed well-prepared and did not look tired and confused as has been the case in some public forums.

There were still McCain problems in that instead of having a conversation about important issues he played to the crowd and told stories he must have told hundred of times. Some of his responses seemed elitist - a rich person is someone who make several million a year. He seemed a bit too cocky and arrogant on some questions.

Now there are doubts about some of his performance. Did McCain know what questions were going to be asked? He was not in a "cone of silence" as was claimed in the debate. He wasn't even in the hall. The only people who say he didn't know the questions were campaign workers who have every reason to lie. Interesting media and Republican responses to the cone of silence doubts.

Some of the McCain stories seemed too pat, although he has repeated them often while campaigning. Now there are questions being raised about his most dramatic story - a guard who helped him and later secretly revealed he was a Christian. McCain never told that story for years. He told the story of a guard helping him but not that he revealed he was a Christian. But after he became an Alexander Solzhenitsyn fan he first told the story on the campaign trail in 1999. Solzhenitsyn has the same story of a secret Christian in a prison camp in "The Gulag Archipelago."

How much has McCain been lying? I don't know. I think McCain might simply be repeating a characteristic of his hero, Ronald Reagan. He was another old geezer who several times became confused about what had actually happened to him and stories he read or movies he saw or acted in.