Hotline After Dark -- For Love Of The Game

ESPN's Berman caught up with John McCain and Barack Obama yesterday. The interviews aired during "Monday Night Football"'s half-time. First up, Obama:

Obama, asked what he has learned about himself during the campaign: "I don't get too high when things are going well and I don't get too low when things are going tough. I think that has helped me and the organization stay steady. We just try to run our game plan and don't get distracted too much. I think it has served us well. ... If I should have the honor of serving as president, that will serve us well at a time when things are pretty tough."

Berman: "If you could change one thing in sports, what would that be?"

Obama: "I think it is about time that we have play-offs in college football. I am fed up with these computer rankings. ... Get the top eight teams right at the end, you got a play-off, decide on a national champion."

After the jump, McCain and Obama give closing arguments.

(KATHERINE LEHR)

Berman: "What is the best piece of advice you received from the sports world? It could be any time in your life."

Obama: "I think the best advice I got was when I was playing basketball in high school. I was really somebody who had learned the game on the playgrounds. I was playing for a coach who was cut from the Bobby Knight cloth. I kinda rebelled against him a little bit. At some point he said to me, 'Look, this is not about you, it's about the team.' It took me a while, I think, to really understand that, but that's how I've approached the work I've done in politics ever since. ... If you stay focused outside yourself, you get your ego out of the way, then you end up, I think, being able to do a better job."

Note: The interview was conducted prior to the news of Obama's grandmother dying.

McCain was second:

McCain, asked what one thing he'd change in sports: "I'd take significant action to prevent the spread and use of performance-enhancing substances. ... It's not good for the athletes. It's not good for the sports. ... I think it can attack the very integrity of all sports, going all the way down to high school."

Berman: "What's the best piece of advice that you received from the sports world? It could be at any time."

McCain: "I have to go all the way back to high school. I had a football coach who was a football star himself. ... He was my English teacher. He taught me lessons about life. He took a very, very immature young man who was kinda a rebel without a cause and at least gave me a glimpse of life and literature. ... The most important lesson he told me was, you've always got to do the honorable thing and even when nobody's looking, because maybe nobody will know, but you'll know."

Berman: "When Americans go to the polls tomorrow and they read your name, Senator John McCain, what's the one personal quality you want them to think about?"

McCain: "I want them to think,'He. Could. Go. All. The. Way. To The White House.' Even though some pundits have written me off, that's why they play the game. ... I want them to know I've always put my country first" (ESPN, 11/3).

A FREE-FOR-ALL

McCain and Obama also gave closing arguments to ABC's Gibson.

Gibson: "There have been millions and millions of dollars spent on paid advertising by the presidential campaigns in this election. It's our feeling here at 'World News' that the candidates deserve a chance, without paying for it, to have a couple of minutes to make a final pitch, to state their central argument."

Gibson, to McCain: "To sum it up in the brief argument, why should this country vote for John McCain?"

McCain: "Six words -- duty, honor and country, reform, prosperity and peace. I've spent my whole life serving my country as an advocate of reform and honesty and integrity in government. I will continue that battle. That means reforming the way we do business in Washington, restoring trust and confidence. Prosperity, clearly, there are huge differences between myself and Senator Barack Obama on all of our economic outlook. We'll bring this country out of the ditch by creating millions and millions of jobs through alternative energy, through keeping spending down and keeping taxes lower. Peace, I know our enemies and I know our friends. I know how to deal with them. We're in two wars. And I have served my country all of my life. ... I believe that I need no on the job training. I'm ready to continue to do what I've done all my life -- put my country first and serve a cause greater than my self interest and inspire a generation of Americans to do the same."

Gibson: "You come out of a party that is not particularly popular right now. How do you overcome that obstacle and the obstacle of running in the shadow of a president who is not popular?"

McCain: "I have to tell my party that reform is mandatory. We have seen scandal after scandal that's afflicted our party. We have to return to the
principles of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Not only the principles, but the practices."

Gibson, to Obama: "You have been campaigning for 20 months, why should this country elect you?"

Obama: "I would argue that over the last eight years, we have pursued a particular approach to the economy that says, we give more and more
to those with the most. We basically say to middle class families, you're on your own and that somehow everything was going to work itself out. It hasn't. And the central premise of my campaign has been that we need a champion for middle class families who are working hard so they can make it, so they can achieve the American dream. That specifically means that I'm providing tax cuts to 95% of working families. We're going to fix our health care so that it works for every American and give lower premiums. Make sure we have an education system where not only are we reforming
the system, but we're also making college more affordable. That we have an energy policy in this country that frees ourselves on dependence on foreign dependence. ... And that we have a foreign policy that is not hamstrung by our presence in Iraq but is focused on going after al Qaeda.
... And restores our moral standing in the world."

Gibson: "Why should Americans put aside the experience argument and pick you?"

Obama: "I don't think they should put aside the experience argument. I think people have been able to take measure of me over the last two years, and I think what they can come away saying is this is somebody who's not a flash in the pan, this is somebody who takes his responsibility seriously, and most importantly, I hope people come away saying this is a guy who is going to wake up every single day when he's in the White House and he's going to fight for me" ("World News," 11/3).

HAVE NO FEAR, ELECTION DAY IS HERE!

And more of Obama's interview with CBS' Couric in Columbus, OH, aired last night on "Evening News."

Couric: "Let's talk about single-party rule for a moment. Some critics describe it as all accelerator and no brakes. There are fears that perhaps an unbridled, unchecked, filibuster-proof Democratic majority will overreach and move the country too far to the left. How can you assuage people's concerns about that?"

Obama: "I think the concerns are legitimate. Look, the benefit of having a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress would be that, hopefully, you could actually move on some big issues like energy or health care that have been sitting there for decades. And we know they're huge problems, we know we've got to change how we do business there, but we just haven't been able to round up the consensus to get it done. The flip side of it is that, you know, if Democrats come in and say to themselves, 'It's our turn and we're just going to go crazy doing whatever it is that we feel like,' I think their majority won't last very long."

Couric: "What are you most afraid of on Election Day?"

Obama: "You know, I have to say that I feel pretty good about the fact that our campaign has made as good of a case for change as I think we could have. I mean, I have been a highly imperfect candidate. But our campaign as a whole, I think, has delivered on its promise to reach out to people who hadn't been involved in politics, to go into places that hadn't traditionally looked at a Democratic candidate. But ultimately it comes down to a bunch of people making their own individual decisions in that ballot box, and so I'm sure what I'll feel is great interest in terms of how it turns out."

Couric: "Great interest. ... Come on!"

Obama: "A little bit of anxiety."

Couric: "Aren't you going to be a nervous wreck?"

Obama: "You know, I am sure that I won't be sleeping in on Tuesday morning, let's put it that way."

Couric: "The Pennsylvania Republican Party is starting to run an ad in that state which features your former minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright saying, quote, 'God damn America.' Do you think they would have run that ad without the approval of the McCain campaign?"

Obama: "I think the McCain campaign has generally been pretty restrained on that front, and I think they deserve some credit for that. On the other hand, I don't know if there's anybody in America who hasn't seen those videos that they're running. I don't think that's what the American people are thinking about right now."

Couric: "If things go your way on Tuesday and you become this nation's first African-American president, what will that mean to you personally?"

Obama: "There are times where you're shaking hands after a rally and you look out over the crowd and people are telling you their stories: 'I just lost my job,' or 'My wife has ovarian cancer, but she's out there campaigning for you' or, you know, 'My son for the first time has decided that he wants to really apply himself to school because he was inspired by what you're doing.' You hear those stories, and, you know, what you feel is just this enormous sense of obligation and responsibility to really just work your heart out for folks. Because they're investing a lot."

More Obama: "Obviously there's a historic dimension when, you know, a 90-year-old African-American woman just grabs my hand and won't let go and says, you know, 'I am so proud.' You know, you think about what an African-American woman's gone through over the course of a 90-year life, and that will move you deeply. But it's not just a sense of the history made because of race. There is also just this overwhelming feeling of humility and gratitude where you say, boy, I really better come through for folks if I win this thing, because they really need it" (CBS, 11/3).