The Rein in Spain confuses John McCain
(via AmericaBlog)
(Spanish visitors here)
QUESTION: Senator, finally, let’s talk about Spain. If you’re elected president, would you be willing to invite President Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?
MCCAIN: I would be willing meet, uh, with those leaders who our friends [sic] and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion, and by the way, President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very very tough fight against the drug cartels. I’m glad we are now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Merida plan. I intend to move forward with relations, and invite as many of them as I can, those leaders, to the White House.
QUESTION: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government, to the president itself?
MCCAIN: I don’t, you know, honestly I have to look at relations and the situations and the priorities, but I can assure you I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America.
QUESTION: So you have to wait and see if he’s willing to meet with you, or you’ll be able to do it in the White House?
MCCAIN: Well again I don’t, all I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those who are not, and that’s judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America, and the entire region.
QUESTION: Okay. What about you Europe? I’m talking about the President of Spain.
MCCAIN: What about me what?
QUESTION: Okay… are you willing to meet with him if you are elected president?
MCCAIN: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom, and I will stand up to those that do not.
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18. September 2008 at :
Let’s start with the easy stuff. Why is McCain even wasting time with Spanish (as in, Spain-based) media? Is he sucking up to the hispanic vote in the U.S.? Because I don’t see the correlation there. So, if you’re going to bother, shouldn’t you know the President of the country you’re talking about? And shouldn’t you know that anyway after 16 years in the Senate?
18. September 2008 at :
And if he DID know and all he can mutter is that he deals with friends and fights enemies, how insulting is it to basically admit that you don’t know which is which? How does Spain, one of our erstwhile allies, feel about this after all they’ve done to support our war on terror?
18. September 2008 at :
Let me begin by saying that that headline is absolutely brilliant and multi-layered.
I’ve already been asked if I was going to comment on this story at all. I mean, I live in Spain but that doesn’t give me any special insight into this story.
Seems to me that McCain was simply addled during the interview. Why? I don’t know. But I find it very very hard to believe that John McCain doesn’t know that Spain is in Europe. I think initially he didn’t realize he was being asked about the leader of Spain. I think, as Americablog points out, he may have thought the question was about Latin America. But the reporter made it quite clear after that.
Perhaps he was having trouble in his head remembering how good the US relation with Spain is at the moment. They did, after all, vote in Zapatero and then pussy out of Iraq after suffering a terrorist attack. Good job, Spanish people! You gave terrorists a reason to continue doing what they do.
I’m willing to give some benefit of doubt on this issue. Hopefully someone in MSM will call him out for this and find out exactly what the hell was going on. Don’t count on it, though. Deference to the Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees is expected.
Imagine if Obama had made the same error.
18. September 2008 at :
I’ll try to get a read on what the people here think of this after the story goes to print.
18. September 2008 at :
To respond to Josh, whose comments went up while I was composing my own:
I’m sure McCain did the interview (which was broadcast in Spanish) to appeal Hispanic voters. That begs the question why he didn’t have the interview with a Hispanic newspaper (either Latin American based or one in the U.S.).
And as I pointed out in the previous comment, Spain cut and run on Iraq. They do have NATO troops in Afghanistan.
18. September 2008 at :
First, I’d like to hear the rest of the interview. It is difficult to make an honest assessment when we are provided only the last two minutes.
Second, Zapatero is not Spain’s president, he is Spain’s prime minister.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3497808.stm
The reporter continues to insist on McCain’s possibility of meeting with the president of Spain. No wonder McCain was confused, she was asking him to meet with a leader that doesn’t exist.
I guess that’s kind of like Obama saying he’ll meet with the President of Canada to renegotiate NAFTA.
http://americanmadness.com/2008/02/29/democrats-we-don%e2%80%99t-understand-free-trade/
18. September 2008 at :
Eric, you’re kidding right? He was confused because the reporter referred to a leader that doesn’t exist? And you have to hear the rest of the interview because why? Maybe earlier in the interview there’s some clarification as to why he doesn’t know that Spain is in Europe?
Reading the interview it is abundantly clear that the reporter is referring to Spain. Unless McCain is a robot that can’t free think he should have said, “Are you referring to the PRIME MINISTER?” But anyway, the reporter said Spain and Zapatero.
Finally, in Spain Zapatero is referred to as President Zapatero. And then there’s this from Wikipedia: “The executive branch consists of a Council of Ministers presided over by the President of Government (comparable to a prime minister).”
That’s about the richest excuse I think we’re likely to hear. You and Tucker Bounds should exchange notes.
18. September 2008 at :
First, McCain made a mistake in referring to Mexico in the face of a question about Zapatero, the president of the government of Spain (which is different than the president of Spain, a position the country doesn’t have ). Oops, it happens, and it was a silly mistake on his part.
What I’m trying to determine is how the mistake was made. I’m merely saying that without the proper context, we can’t judge McCain’s reponses vis a vis broader issues about his foreign policy proposals, or how he intends to conduct international relations.
This bit says, “finally, let’s talk about Spain,” as though the country is an after thought to the entire interview. What were they talking about before? What other countries did they talk about? What other regimes? What other policies? Why is the rest of the interview being left out? If McCain is so prone to gaff, there must be other ones throughout, right? Shouldn’t we pull them all out of this interview and analysis them? Poke fun at McCain for being some silly old man?
Plus, there is the issue of her accent. Did McCain have difficulty understanding her throughout the interivew? Did he ask for clarification throughout? How well did he respond to her previous questions? I’d like to know that, it has a material impact on what we take away from this snipet.
Yes, I think it is important to understand the context of these questions.
Finally, Jason, I didn’t insult you. I didn’t offer any reference to your comment at all. Why did you feel it necessary to attack me personally? The Tucker Bounds comment was a low blow.
18. September 2008 at :
Fair points on being interested in the rest of the interview.
But sorry, Zapatero is not referred to as Prime Minister in this country. But that’s hardly the point. You and I both know that was not McCain’s confusion and I think it’s disingenuous to suggest it was the source.
The Tucker Bounds comment is only an insult if the world at large considers Bounds to be something bad. I didn’t say, for example, “You and Stalin should exchange notes.” As Bounds continues to be an important spokesperson for the McCain campaign I would think that a large number of people think he’s a good person and doing a great job. My comment itself holds no such personal attack so let’s not be so dramatic. But then I shouldn’t be surprised by the persecution complex from a McCain supporter. Lipstick on a pig, anyone?
The comparison to Bounds was meant to imply that you both have provided lame excuses for pretty glaring problems in the campaign. There was absolutely no personal attack in either that comment or any other part of my post.
18. September 2008 at :
Do you think that its too late to get Mike Bloomberg in for the Republicans if McCain admits that he’s confused? We need a financial leader right now more then ever. Bloomberg for President! An Independent with his own radio and TV station.
18. September 2008 at :
Bloomberg would be our Silvio Berlusconi!
18. September 2008 at :
A Jew for president!!!
Vive De Bloomberg!
18. September 2008 at :
Jason, you and I have the benefit of reading the interview. So the words are not spoken to us by a non-native English speaker. What I continue to suggest is that perhaps her heavy accent lent itself to the confusion.
I did some research. While I’m still unable to find the entire transcript, I did find a Time magazine take on the entire interview.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0%2C8599%2C1842156%2C00.html
The interview was conducted for a Miami radio station and focused heavily on Latin America. “The question about Zapatero came after a series of questions on how McCain sees relations with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba,” says the article, and as I said before, it is tacked on to the end of the interview as an after thought.
So it is most likely that McCain was confused, given the focus on the conversation had been on Latin America and when she first poses the question, it is very difficult to understand her, because of the way she pronounces the prime minister’s name.
I posit that McCain believed she was asking about the Zapatistas, thus his response about Mexico and Calderon. Why else would he respond to a question about Spain with a response about Mexico? Even the most basic media training would tell him to first acknowledge Spain, and bridge back to your key message. It is not until her third follow up question that Spain is mentioned again, at which time all references to Mexico are dropped and a stock answer about meeting various world leaders is provided.
Bottom line, McCain made a mistake. He probably didn’t listen as well as he should have. But to draw some broader conclusion from this interview (as your friends at leftist America Blog are doing) is ridiculous. It doesn’t take much to find similar ridiculous statement made by Saint Obama. (Type “Obama 57 states” into you tube for a real good one).
18. September 2008 at :
I listened to that last portion of the interview without the Spanish translation and McCain sounds like he is just a bit confused. And the reporter’s accent is not the easiest to understand (and I listen to Spanish people speaking English quite often).
Listening to the interview I got the distinct impression that McCain was giving a sort of generic response to a question about meeting world leaders. Most likely because of what you propose, Eric, that he seems to have misunderstood given the nature of the rest of the interview. It sounds like he was trying to avoid a Freedonia gaffe whereby a politician is asked about the situation in Freedonia and he responds that it’s something we’ll have to look into. Freedonia being, of course, the fictitious country in the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup”.
But I did say this in my first comment on this thread:
“I’m willing to give some benefit of doubt on this issue. Hopefully someone in MSM will call him out for this and find out exactly what the hell was going on.”
I just thought the “leader that doesn’t exist” argument was a bit silly.
18. September 2008 at :
Interesting, the BBC rephrases the interviewers’ question:
“‘If you are elected president, would you be willing to invite Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?’”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7624143.stm
Why would the BBC deliberatly misquote the question?
The AP does something similar (though it doesn’t take the quote and change it):
“John McCain either doesn’t want to meet Spain’s prime minister any time soon or isn’t quite sure who he is.”
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i2PBL0IR2f4cpJXiCL8eTgjCZuQgD939AVK80
And the AFP as well:
“John McCain’s campaign Thursday refused to say whether the Republican candidate would welcome Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero — the leader of a key NATO ally — to his White House”
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iZ-rrNcaSyTpQpfydn7C4_AVoNYQ
I suspect there exists a journalistic style to refer to the “president of the Spanish government” as prime minister, since the country of Spain does not have an executive “President” position. The difference being how the leaders are elected. In Spain, the leader of the majority party is elevated to a prime minister level position (similar to the UK). Whereas in the United States, the President is a seperately elected executive.
As for questions Americablog brings up about McCain mental facilities, even the interviewer acknowledges his answer doesn’t betray ignorance about Spain’s leaders (so sorry Josh, your title is misleading):
“She tells me she doesn’t believe that McCain didn’t know who Prime Minister Zapatero is or where Spain was. Instead, she believes that McCain was deliberately ducking the question of whether he’d meet with the Spanish Prime Minister.
‘I didn’t get the impression that he didn’t know who Zapatero was or where Spain was,’ the reporter, Yoli Cuello, told me. ‘Honestly, what I thought was that he didn’t want to answer the question with a yes or no answer.’”
…
“Pressed on why McCain would keep seguing into a discussion of Latin America if he knew who she was talking about, Cuello said: ‘I think because I was talking with him before about Latin America. He was not giving me a straight answer. I wasn’t expecting a straight answer.’”
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/mccains_spaingaffe_interviewer.php
18. September 2008 at :
It is distressing that everyone would blow this out of proportion, but it just goes to show that arguments about a professional media are usually overstated. A few of us amateurs scouted out the reality while the major outlets will just go with the easy angle. Maybe the death of traditional media to the blogosphere is not such a bad thing.
19. September 2008 at :
Strange the BBC would change the quote like that.
The reason the MSM probably hasn’t delved into this is because they don’t bother wasting time on minutiae the way we do at blogs.
Andrew Sullivan is constantly railing against the MSM for not doing its job properly while he attempts to scout out the little details on his blog. Although he posted on this story and then later posted a McCain camp email referring to “President Zapatero” and asked the same question Eric did about the PM/Pres confusion (although Sullivan’s ire was directed at the campaign while Eric’s was at the journalist). But I have to wonder why Sullivan didn’t notice that the journalist herself said “President Zapatero”!
After I wrote Sullivan an email about Zapatero being referred to as President in Spain (with an AM link) he posted a correction stating that the McCain camp was “technically” correct in calling him President.
But he didn’t give a hat tip to either me or AM.
19. September 2008 at :
It was immediately clear to me that McCain was confusing Zapatero of Spain with the Zapatista movement - Subcommandante Marcos, etc - of Chiapas, Mexico, which has been fighting the Mexican government for nearly 15 years and is involved in drug trafficking. So it’s not just that McCain doesn’t know who the head of government in Spain is; it’s that he doesn’t know the difference between Spain and Mexico.
19. September 2008 at :
Thanks for spreading the AM good name Jason.
19. September 2008 at :
I can’t believe that this man is really running for president. I don’t intend to run for president, but I know the difference between Spain and Mexico, and where they are on the map
19. September 2008 at :
We should have an educated President? Shirley you’re joking?
19. September 2008 at :
Shirley, from this interview, do you honestly believe McCain doesn’t know the difference between Spain and Mexico? I’ve spent a lot of posts saying I think he was confused by the accent and the succession of questions. To say he doesn’t know the difference between the two nations is a little disingenuous, don’t you think?
19. September 2008 at :
I think we need someone to step in and take some of the burden off Eric here. For one, because he’s going on vacation. Also, because it’s got to be tiring.
20. September 2008 at :
Check this out from The New Republic which sites a piece that gives a very reasonable explanation for the gaffe (basically Eric’s explanation exactly) and then also goes on to find fault (rightfully, in my view) with the McCain campaign failing to own up to the misunderstanding instead passing it off as if McCain knew exactly what was going on but didn’t want to make a commitment to inviting Zapatero to The White House. Which, if it’s true, just begs more questions than it answers.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/09/18/the-spanish-american-war.aspx
20. September 2008 at :
Thanks Josh. I think nine out of the ten readers of this blog will be quite happy not to have me typing off at the mouth for a while.
20. September 2008 at :
Jason, McCain’s people messed the response up. They should’ve just said, “McCain misheard the question. We’ve previously stated we would be willing to meet with Zapatero and we stand by that statement.” We are talking about the leader of Spain for crying out loud. It’s not like she asked about Iran, North Korea, Syria, the PLO, or any number of quasi-terrorists regimes for which his “fix” would have been appropriate.
This was an incredibly easy situation to fix, to the benefit of everyone involved, and yet, here we are dodging silly stupid mistakes for some warped sense of pride.
Our politicians refusal to acknowledge mistakes when they happen is so damn frustrating to me. McCain, you messed up. Own up to it and move on. In politics, no one will remember this a week from now anyway.
Thanks for digging this piece up.
21. September 2008 at :
[...] 21, 2008 · No Comments Deary me. Here’s a transcription of a recent interview McCain did; he’s interviewed by a Hispanic woman but [...]
6. November 2008 at :
I would like to see the inscription “to be continied”:-D