McCain’s Foreign Policy Follies

The latest developed last night when TPM and other web source reported on an excerpt from McCain’s interview with Radio Caracol Miami in which McCain clearly did not know who the interviewer was talking about when she asked him a question about Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain. The audio clip that surfaced yesterday was translated into Spanish, so people who speak English but not Spanish had to rely on an English translation of a Spanish translation of an interview conducted in English. Today the un-translated audio has surfaced:

The interview starts with a couple of questions about a McCain Administration’s policy toward Latin America. At the 3:00 mark, the topic changes:

Question: Senator, finally, let’s talk about Spain. If you’re elected president, would you be willing to invite President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?

McCain: I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are our friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion. And by the way, president Calderon in Mexico is fighting a 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 the 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 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.

The charges at many of the lefty blogs fall into two categories, either that McCain apparently doesn’t know who Prime Minister Zapatero is or that he intentionally snubbed Spain and intentionally stated that he’d have to consider whether Zapatero would be a welcome guest to the White House.

I’m quite sure that McCain knows that Spain is an important NATO ally and recalls that Zapatero was elected 4 years ago in a highly publicized election which was greatly impacted by the Madrid transit bombings which killed almost 200 people just 1 month before. In my opinion it seems much more likely than either of those scenarios that McCain simply didn’t understand the interviewer when she said she was changing the subject to Spain, and then twice failed to recognize Zapatero’s name, first during the initial question in that segment and then again when she tried to direct the interview back to her question following McCain’s off-topic response. Miscommunication happens, particularly among people who speak different first languages, so this shouldn’t be a big deal in the larger scheme of the election.

But for two things.

First, McCain must have realized by the interviewer’s third question (in my transcription) that he didn’t understand some of the questions she had asked him. But rather than simply explaining that and asking for a repeat of the question, he switched on autopilot and tried to fake it with highly generic talking points designed to cover policy for an entire “hemisphere” (as it turned out, the wrong hemisphere). This is a show of disrespect and disregard for both his interviewer and Radio Caracol Miami’s listeners, surely part of a demographic that is very important to McCain’s strong polling in Florida.

Second – and this is very troublesome – was the McCain campaign’s response to questions about the interview:

McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Sheunemann said McCain’s answer was intentional.

“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,” he said in an e-mail.

What?

This is bizarre for several reasons. First, just this past April, McCain responded to Zapatero’s call to “open a new chapter” in Spainish-American relations with an explicit invitation to the White House:

The Republican candidate for US president, John McCain, has also signaled his intention to revive relations with Spain if he is elected in November.

‘This is the moment to leave behind discrepancies with Spain,’ he said in an interview published in Sunday’s edition of the newspaper El Pais.

‘I would like (Zapatero) to visit the US. Zapatero is the first leader in Spain’s democratic history who has not made such a visit in an official capacity,’ he said.

‘We have many more values and goals in common than differences that divide us,’ said McCain.

I certainly don’t know of any statements or actions from the Spanish government since that exchange which might change that warming between the two NATO allies.

Further, if Sheunemann is telling the truth, that McCain did in fact slight the Spanish Prime Minister (actually, thanks to Sheunemann, McCain has now most certainly slighted Zapatero, whatever he might have initially meant during the interview) he also claims that McCain really does believe that Spain is in the same hemisphere as Latin America (unless perhaps rhetorically placing it within Latin America was another bizarre derision of Spain?). Sheunemann and McCain apparently also believe that Mexican drug cartels are somehow connected to Spain. Read through the quotes again and show me if you can better reconcile Sheunemann’s response with the interview. If Sheunemann is right that “Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred”, then the majority of his response can only suggest a simply absurd, highly troubling perspective.

So we are left to decide whether McCain’s foreign policy perspective has lunged toward insanity or whether the campaign, much like the President they seek to succeed, is too vain and proud to admit even a simple and relatively innocuous miscommunication during an interview, even at the expense of still-healing relations with a key NATO ally that has recently extended an olive branch toward us. This from the candidate who presents his foreign policy expertise as his strongest suit and the greatest reason to vote for him instead of Senator Obama.

This is a good time to recall some of McCain’s previous foreign policy foibles this election season.

First, I believe the following excerpt from a McCain press conference, in which McCain “respectfully disagrees” that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the Supreme Leader of Iran, never received much media play because the media actively plays up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the leader of Iran for their own purposes. Ahmadinejad’s inflamitory rhetoric and showmanship style is much better for ratings and front page headlines than Khamenei’s shadowy, more quiet presence (not that he’s any less sinister):

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Next, recall McCain’s insistance, in attempt to ridicule Senator Obama, that President Bush’s “Surge” strategy predated and actually led to the Anbar Awakening, a reversal of the actual timeline:

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And finally, from Senator McCain’s greates hits album, the now infamous little diddy from the man who told us at the RNC that he “hates war”, that he believes “it is terrible beyond imagination.” Surely no man who has lived through and seen what John McCain has seen would ever make crass casual jokes at political rallies about bombing foreign civilians:

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Per haps none of these things by themselves might seem particularly important in assessing a presidential candidate’s foreign policy credentials and trustworthyness. But in my opinion they display a pattern that should be carefully considered before deciding that Senator McCain is the candidate who is better trusted to administer a foreign policy that will keep America strong and Americans safe.

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