At the risk of dredging up the saddleback forum again ... I have to state something kind of obvious which no one seems to have brought up yet.
According to McCain spokesman Charlie Black, McCain's motorcade left his hotel at 5 p.m. Saturday, the same time that Senator Obama took the stage with Pastor Rick Warren.
It was agreed in advance that McCain was supposed to be sequestered in the 'Cone of Silence' during Obama's interview segment. But McCain was only just leaving the hotel at the time when he was supposed to be sequestered. Now, the McCain campaign is blaming his tardiness on traffic, but the fact of the matter is that, even without one iota of traffic, John McCain was not on schedule to abide by the rules of the forum.
John McCain had no intention of being in the 'Cone of Silence' for the entire hour.
Or else his campaign is so completely in disarray that they can't get him to a 5:00 appointment on time.
In addition, it's about time Pastor Rick Warren came clean and provided to the media the exact questions as they were given to the campaigns. If people want to claim that McCain's response to the education (non)question was actually a canned reply to one of the provided questions, then let's see the questions.
If they are conducive to a "Yes. Yes. And find bad teachers another line of work" rapid fire response, then McCain has a perfectly plausible alibi. But if Warren's written questions were not worded in such a way as to afford McCain three distinct answers, then McCain was answering questions which he had not been asked.
The only way to resolve this is for Pastor Warren to produce the questions that were given to the candidates before the forum.
(Cross-Posted at Newsvine)