05:45 pm
Spanish Inquisition: The Audio
Pull up a comfy chair with some soft pillows and give it a listen. There is no doubt that McCain has no freaking clue.
Most damning line: “I know the leaders.” Apparently not.
Is it me, or does McCain not sound so good? And it’s transparently clear that she told him up front that she was asking about Zapatero. That said, my guess at the order of the questions was off. He started with the Calderon answer.
She gives him four chances. On three occasions she references Zapatero or Spain directly. Two of the four times he comes back with Latin America.
And listen to the end again. The interviewer is so flustered by McCain’s reply that she forgets what her next question is, and instead asks him to say hello to her listeners. In response McCain makes it clear that he thinks he’s talking to Spanish-language listeners in Florida (which would explain why he did the damn thing in the first place).
In fact, the interview was conducted by Radio Caracol, a Miami station that is part of the Union Radio network. It was broadcast in Miami. But it also was broadcast on the entire Union Radio network, and McCain clearly had no idea that was the case.
As I predicted, Republic of Georgia lobbyist hero and McCain foreign policy spokesman Randy Scheunemann is lying denying that McCain meant anything other than he will not commit to meet Zapatero:
In this week’s interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally,” he said in an e-mail. “If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America’s adversaries. It’s called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world’s worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office.
Remember the whole kerfuffle about Bush not being able to admit a mistake? Four more years, baby, four more years.