THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE:

The Saddleback Church’s Civil Forum on the Presidency got off to a rocky start Saturday. Well, for reporters anyway.

Checking in went pretty smoothly, though there were some media outlets griping about their lack of access.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone. If you’d asked us to plan the event, we would all have gotten exclusive interviews with both candidates, and John McCain and Barack Obama would still be out there yammering away.

Unfortunately for us, reporters weren’t allowed to view McCain and Obama in the church. We had to watch it on a large TV screen from a campus tent set up for reporters. Oh, sure, we had Web access and they fed us pizza, but we wanted to see the candidates in person.

Then a wave of anxiety swept the room when the WiFi access crashed and the TV screen went mute.

Still, we kept our sense of humor as the TV screen’s audio fell silent during the National Anthem.

Someone started singing it a cappella, so the rest of us joined in. One camera guy, though, turned to the Daily Pilot reporter and whispered, “Monkey see, monkey do.”

Cynicism usually reigns when you’re talking about reporters, but that struck us as a bit too snooty. Sorry, but there’s nothing corny about singing the National Anthem, in our humble opinion.

Did anyone else happen to catch Pastor Rick Warren congratulating Obama with a hearty, “home run,” after the Democrat’s reply to Warren’s question about his tax plan?

McCain, meanwhile, quipped during his reply to that question that he would define individual wealth as someone who makes $5 million annually. He quickly realized he probably generated a YouTube moment and emphasized that he was joking.

Naturally, McCain’s quip ended up on YouTube, and Obama bashed the Arizona senator for it while on the stump this week.

McCain may have had the last laugh, though, as many pundits declared him the winner because they felt his humor and directness connected with voters better than Obama’s nuanced and low-key performance.

And did anyone else notice that, when Warren asked McCain for good examples of bipartisan legislation he’s worked on, Mr. Gang of 14 skipped a mention of his immigration reform bill that he crafted with Sen. Ted Kennedy?

McCain instead said he reached across the aisle to work on “climate change, out-of-control spending and torture,” while adding, “The list goes on. There are a large number of issues where I put my country first and reached across the aisle.”

Then he went way back in time during his freshman year in Congress when he bucked his hero, President Reagan, on sending peacekeeping troops to Lebanon in the early ’80s. He said he didn’t feel that Reagan had sent enough troops to keep the peace. The mission turned into a terrible disaster Oct. 23, 1983, when suicide bombers slammed trucks rigged with explosives into the barracks, killing 241 American servicemen.

Shades of Iraq. McCain’s anecdote squares nicely with his argument that he also criticized President Bush for not sending enough troops to secure the peace after the invasion and pushed for the troop surge to stabilize Iraq.

ALL MINDS ON MONEY

California’s budget, or lack thereof, was on everyone’s minds at Tuesday’s Costa Mesa City Council meeting.

Councilwoman Katrina Foley was the first to bring it up in council comments. Discussion continued when Mayor Pro Tem Allan Mansoor revisited it during debate about renewing Costa Mesa’s building incentive programs. The programs, which give fee waivers to residents who improve their houses, were up for renewal. Mansoor expressed concerns about program costs.

He asked that the council look at doing away with the incentives if money got tight.

“Once the state gets its act together and finalizes the budget, if there are take-aways I think we’ll have to consider eliminating this as well as other things,” Mansoor said.

More than a month into the 2008-09 fiscal year, the state still doesn’t have a budget, and some members of the legislature are calling for cuts at the city level. City Manager Allan Roeder said talks on specific budget cuts were premature because the city doesn’t know what might happen to its coffers.

“The reality is that, depending on what the state may or may not do, everything is on the table,” Roeder said.