Since McCain is basing his qualifications for office on his vast foreign policy, I’d think that not knowing the names of people like Prime Ministers would be a disadvantage.  It’s like saying you’re an expert on cheese and not knowing what Brie is.

Can someone please check this man for dementia?  He’s starting to scare me.

You can be sure the anecdote was in all the press in Spain this morning. It´s terrifying from this side of the ocean as well. (At least he didn´t resent that Rodriguez Zapatero sent a couple of ministers to the Democratic convention, and no one to the Republican one, and he doesn´t know about his supposed bad standing with Bush. I guess that was the point of the question)

I think you can also get away with pizza cheese.  (Not to be confused with mozzarella, which has an Eye-tal-yun sounding name, and is thus elitist.)

This is the second time in a week that someone on the McCain/Palin ticket has said something in an
interview that could’ve caused an international incident if they’d said something like that after being elected.

You do not issue a belligerent statement regarding your lack of interest in meeting diplomatically with one of our allies because you don’t recognize the name under discussion.

You don’t say on national TV that going to war with Russia (a country that has been one of our allies for the past
going on 2 decades)  would be hunky dory.

What, you’re saying you don’t want some guy who instead of admitting he misspoke, recklessly charges into some bizarre anti-Spanish Zapatro position to save his precious ego? McCain’s pride first, NATO second.

http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/

I ate at a Spanish Restaurant last night.

In addition, I am aware of who PM Zapatero is.

I am probably not qualified to run Hewlett Packard.

Does this mean that I am qualified to be Vice President?

Jerry, it depends on whether or not your thirty five and were born in the U. S.  Also, have you ever seen Cuba from a boat?

McCain’s spokesperson elaborated this afternoon on the candidate’s position WRT meeting foreign leaders:  “Sen. McCain stands ready to meet with our friends and allies, but will not welcome to the White House those who do not share our values or stand with the United States in the Global War on Terror.  Accordingly, Sen. McCain will issue no assurances that he will meet with Prime Minister Pete Nice until MC Serch rescinds the gas-face he issued to Sen. McCain in 1990.”

He may have an unresolved customer-service dispute with Zappos.com.

The part that made me the saddest was this hard line against any populists in latin america.  Tacking so solidly to the corporatist line that countries aren’t allowed any autonomy especially in the realm of economics and economic justice.

Spain has a President, not a PM!

I would almost put money down that when McCain was asked about meeting Zapatero, he though the question was about meeting the Zapatistas who were a terrorist guerilla outfit in southern Mexico.

Give him a break, he’s the 2,000-year-old-man.

Well, and yet, Rodriguez Zapatero is pretty high on the neocon hate list, having withdrawn his country’s troops from Iraq in the aftermath of the 3/11 bombing.  Bush has been making a point of snubbing him.  That’s pretty much the biggest thing going on in US-Spanish relations nowdays, other than Spanish troops in Afghanistan and a Spanish ship participating in the NATO task force now in the Black Sea, playing intimidation games with the Russians.

So, any aide who let McCain give an interview to Spanish radio without being briefed on topical issues in US-Spanish relations ought to commit seppuku immediately—that would be inconceivable incompetence.  And it’s quite possible that this really is an example of McCain’s neocon craziness, rather than just an example of McCain babbling.  And both Bush and McCain are horribly ungrateful and ungracious to a loyal ally who has supported us at great risk and cost.

Zapatistas?  Aren’t they those communist socialist radical Banditos?

No, no, no: they’re shoemakers.
They make $300 shoes.

I heard it the same way as liberalrob—McCain’s attention wandered, he missed the “Spain” part, and thought he was being asked about the Zapatistas.  I have some modicum of sympathy for him here—it’s a phone interview, the interviewer spoke with a heavy accent, and it can be really hard to understand accented English over the phone, especially if there’s any static on the line or if you’re even slightly distracted.

But I agree with rea that at the very least he should have been briefed well enough to recognize the name even if he missed the country he was being asked about.  So my sympathy is pretty limited.  But like liberalrob I’d bet money that he was thinking about Zapatistas and that’s where the bizarre rambling about Mexico came from.

Mmmmh, we have no Prime Minister in Spain. He’s our president.

Just to clarify.

I have some modicum of sympathy for him here—it’s a phone interview, the interviewer spoke with a heavy accent, and it can be really hard to understand accented English over the phone, especially if there’s any static on the line or if you’re even slightly distracted.

I guess you could be right, since the same has happened to me while I was listening to the interview - I couldn’t understand more than a few words of what the man was saying.
But he also sounds like like a completely clueless old man. And when the interviewer said she was referring to the president of Spain he should have realized his mistake and didn’t, so that’s no excuse.