McCain said in June that Zapatero, the president of Spain, would be welcome at his White House. This bolsters my argument that McCain didn’t intend to give Spain the cold shoulder in the Spanish-language radio interview. He simply didn’t know what was going on.
Of course, the McCain campaign had to respond to this situation and they couldn’t say, “Our candidate misheard the interviewer or misunderstood what was going on, so let’s just forget this little senior moment, shall we?” So they claimed that McCain intentionally refused to sit down with Zapatero, who is a socialist:
“The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain’s willingness to meet Zapatero (and id’d him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred). Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview,” the Senator’s foreign policy adviser Randy Sheunemann told the Washington Post.
Okay, that’s insane. Lumping Spain — a member of NATO and thus a country we are bound to defend militarily in the event of crisis — in with Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea is clearly crazy. And it’s a position, apparently, John McCain didn’t endorse as recently as June. So we know what’s going on here, right? The campaign put out a self-serving, cover-your-ass statement and John McCain is old but not so militaristic he wants to sever ties with one of our oldest allies. Everyone clear?