This past weekend, Sens McCain and Obama participated in a two-hour "Values Forum" hosted and moderated by megachurch pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren.  The candidates did not debate each other, but instead were given a single hour to answer the same set of questions from Pastor Warren, in back-to-back order, with Obama going first. 

According to the rules laid out beforehand, the candidate to go second—Sen. McCain—was supposed to stay in a "cone of silence" during the first hour with Obama, on the premises of the event but off-stage, so as to not have the advantage of hearing the questions asked of Obama that were also to be asked of McCain the second hour.  According to the NYT, Sen. McCain did not abide by these ground rules.

Senator John McCain was not in a “cone of silence” on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California.

Members of the McCain campaign staff, who flew here Sunday from California, said Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed by the Rev. Rick Warren, the author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

The matter is of interest because Mr. McCain, who followed Mr. Obama’s hourlong appearance in the forum, was asked virtually the same questions as Mr. Obama.  Mr. McCain’s performance was well received, raising speculation among some viewers, especially supporters of Mr. Obama, that he was not as isolated during the Obama interview as Mr. Warren implied.

So he was in a car, where he could easily have listened to Obama's interview on the radio, or even watched it on his limousine's TV.  More to the point, Sen. McCain was not where he agreed he would be during the interview, nor where he told Rick Warren he actually was during the interview.

Mr. Warren started by asking Mr. McCain, “Now, my first question: Was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now?”

Mr. McCain deadpanned, “I was trying to hear through the wall.”

Nor did Rick Warren realize he had been misled about McCain's whereabouts until he was interviewed on CNN the following day.

Interviewed Sunday on CNN, Mr. Warren seemed surprised to learn that Mr. McCain was not in the building during the Obama interview.

In other words, McCain lied to the most popular pastor in America and broke the ground rules of the forum, quite possibly in order to perform better than Obama by knowing the questions in advance. 

The McCain camp has reacted to this assertion characteristically.

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Of course, we all understand that "former prisoners of war" are incapable of cheating.

Seriously, I am getting pretty tired of this act, and the Obama campaign should be too.  Aided and abetted by a compliant media, McCain has consistently deflected serious questions about his truthfulness, character, judgment, and policy positions by referring to his past as a POW.  I'm sorry, but we are not electing Former POW in chief.  The Obama campaign should stop letting him get away this nonsense. 

They should take a page out of the Karl Rove political handbook.  John McCain thinks he's qualified to be elected president because he is a straight-talker, proven by the fact that he was a POW 40 years ago?  He wants us to believe his personal heroism takes questions about his honesty and judgment off the table?   Fine.  It's his greatest (perhaps only) strength as a national candidate.  On that note, the Obama campaign, through surrogates, should now seek to undermine this strength in every truthful way it can.  Channel Rove, by attacking their opponent at his greatest strength, not greatest weakness.

After all, McCain makes it easier all the time.  For instance, take a look at his famous POW "cross in the dirt" story, which he repeated again at the Rick Warren forum:

It was Christmas Day, we were allowed to stand outside of our cell for a few minutes, and those days we were not allowed to see or communicate with each other although we certainly did.  And I was standing outside for a few minutes, outside my cell.  He came walking up.  He stood there for a minute and with his handle [sic] on the dirt in the courtyard he drew a cross and he stood there and a minute later, he rubbed it out and walked away.  For a minute there, there was just two Christians worshiping together.  I'll never forget that moment.

It now appears that this description of events of is quite similar to one recounted by legendary (and recently departed) Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, regarding his experience in the Gulag.

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down.  He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.