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cosQuick quiz: In which continent is Spain located?
If you know the answer, you just might have a better grasp of geography than John McCain.
I never expected to like McCain's foreign policy. He sold out everything I used to think he believed, to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If he thought supporting Bush's foreign policy was the transcendental issue of the day, the thing worth throwing everything else away for, he obviously wasn't going to have a foreign policy I'd be on speaking terms with.
However, I expected McCain to differ from Bush in this way: I thought he knew something about the rest of the world and foreign policy. At least he'd offer a break from the cluelessness and incompetence of Bush. Turns out, McCain is confused and clueless about foreign policy, more so than Bush. Very dangerously so. This was a genuine surprise to me.
I ignored the evidence at first, as McCain did things like repeatedly refer to Czechoslovakia in the present tense even though it hasn't existed in 15 years, or repeatedly confused Sunni and Shia and thus confused who was allied with whom in Iraq. I "knew" that McCain had a lot of foreign policy experience, so I thought these incidents were weird, puzzling, and somewhat funny, but they didn't really reach me.
Then came a stunning, eye-opening exchange about Iran that made me re-evaluate what I thought I knew.
The context: Obama said he would be willing to negotiate with our enemies, Iran and North Korea in particular, and said he would meet with their leaders. For weeks, the McCain and Obama campaigns had been arguing in public about this. McCain, in ridiculing Obama's stated willingness to meet with the leaders of Iran, loved to quote outrageous inflammatory comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (McCain misconstrued Ahmandinejad's meaning of the most notorious of these quotes, but that's another issue). "How could Obama meet with the guy who says these things??" was McCain's frequent jibe.
Now, watch that video on the right. You can also read the transcript here, but you really ought to see how McCain handled it.
Joe Klein is absolutely right: Iran has two parallel systems of government, a democracy headed by the elected president Ahmadinejad, and a theocracy headed by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Foreign policy, the military, and the nuclear program are all under the authority of the theocracy, and the elected president does not have authority over them.
Joe Klein saw that Obama had never talked about meeting with Ahmadinejad specifically, and he checked with the Obama campaign to confirm that. Why, he asked McCain, do you keep quoting Ahmadinejad when addressing this? Maybe, he suggested, Obama wants to meet with Ali Khamenei. McCain responded with derision and mocking contempt for the idea that anyone would suggest that Ahmadinejad isn't Iran's leader.
This is a basic fact. McCain was selling himself as the experienced foreign policy expert specifically on the issue of dealing with Iran, and not only did he get something so fundamental flatly wrong, he showed complete confidence in his wrongness and mocked a suggestion that he might be wrong. Sound like Bush?
In light of this, I started looking at things that McCain said without assuming to begin with that he knows what he's talking about, and it was unsettling.
In July, McCain was crowing that the "surge" had reduced violence in Iraq. Violence in Iraq was indeed down, but some people pointed out that diplomatic developments, such as al-Sadr's ceasfire and the "Anbar awakening", might be the real reason. McCain didn't like that, probably because it sounded too Democratic: diplomatic solutions more effective than just throwing troops at the problem. So he argued back... by saying the surge caused the Anbar awakening!
The Anbar awakening, a tentative alliance between the US and local Sunni leaders to oppose insurgents, began before the surge was proposed.
So on Iraq, just like on Iran, McCain is fundamentally clueless about the most basic facts.
Now when I hear about McCain making a stupid error like calling Sudan "Somalia", or talking about the nonexistent "Iraq-Pakistan border" I see it differently. Some wonder if it's his age causing him to slip up like this so frequently, but I think these are the kinds of mistakes he wouldn't make if he really knew about the rest of the world. You don't repeatedly confuse who is allied with whom in Iraq simply because the words "Sunni" and "Shia" get mixed up in your head - you do that if you don't know, and you're trying to remember the roles of the various groups in Iraq as if they were just similar-sounding words.
And then... and then... this happened and completely boggled my mind.
Interviewed by a reporter from one of Spain's largest newspapers*, El Pais, John McCain... seemed unaware that Spain even existed! Asked about Spain, he answered about Mexico. Asked about meeting with Spanish president Zapatero, he talks about "friends and enemies" and about US relations with "Latin America". She had to explicitly remind him that Spain was in Europe and he still didn't get it. He suggested that he'd meet with Zapatero if he were dedicated to "human rights, democracy, and freedom" (Spain is already a US ally, in NATO, and has troops in Afghanistan).
Maybe McCain is losing his mind. But this goes far beyond mixing up words, and it's dangerous.
* Correction: It was a radio reporter, whose station is owned by a Spanish company that also owns El Pais; the reporter herself does not work for that newspaper.
If you know the answer, you just might have a better grasp of geography than John McCain.
I never expected to like McCain's foreign policy. He sold out everything I used to think he believed, to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq. If he thought supporting Bush's foreign policy was the transcendental issue of the day, the thing worth throwing everything else away for, he obviously wasn't going to have a foreign policy I'd be on speaking terms with.
However, I expected McCain to differ from Bush in this way: I thought he knew something about the rest of the world and foreign policy. At least he'd offer a break from the cluelessness and incompetence of Bush. Turns out, McCain is confused and clueless about foreign policy, more so than Bush. Very dangerously so. This was a genuine surprise to me.
I ignored the evidence at first, as McCain did things like repeatedly refer to Czechoslovakia in the present tense even though it hasn't existed in 15 years, or repeatedly confused Sunni and Shia and thus confused who was allied with whom in Iraq. I "knew" that McCain had a lot of foreign policy experience, so I thought these incidents were weird, puzzling, and somewhat funny, but they didn't really reach me.
Then came a stunning, eye-opening exchange about Iran that made me re-evaluate what I thought I knew.
The context: Obama said he would be willing to negotiate with our enemies, Iran and North Korea in particular, and said he would meet with their leaders. For weeks, the McCain and Obama campaigns had been arguing in public about this. McCain, in ridiculing Obama's stated willingness to meet with the leaders of Iran, loved to quote outrageous inflammatory comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (McCain misconstrued Ahmandinejad's meaning of the most notorious of these quotes, but that's another issue). "How could Obama meet with the guy who says these things??" was McCain's frequent jibe.
Now, watch that video on the right. You can also read the transcript here, but you really ought to see how McCain handled it.
Joe Klein is absolutely right: Iran has two parallel systems of government, a democracy headed by the elected president Ahmadinejad, and a theocracy headed by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Foreign policy, the military, and the nuclear program are all under the authority of the theocracy, and the elected president does not have authority over them.
Joe Klein saw that Obama had never talked about meeting with Ahmadinejad specifically, and he checked with the Obama campaign to confirm that. Why, he asked McCain, do you keep quoting Ahmadinejad when addressing this? Maybe, he suggested, Obama wants to meet with Ali Khamenei. McCain responded with derision and mocking contempt for the idea that anyone would suggest that Ahmadinejad isn't Iran's leader.
This is a basic fact. McCain was selling himself as the experienced foreign policy expert specifically on the issue of dealing with Iran, and not only did he get something so fundamental flatly wrong, he showed complete confidence in his wrongness and mocked a suggestion that he might be wrong. Sound like Bush?
In light of this, I started looking at things that McCain said without assuming to begin with that he knows what he's talking about, and it was unsettling.
For example, I knew that he often seemed confused about troop levels in Iraq, but I didn't take it seriously because I pay some attention to Iraq and don't always remember the troop level numbers myself. Of course I expect him to know more than I do, but ... looking at the pattern, I began to realize that he really had no idea what he was talking about.
In July, McCain was crowing that the "surge" had reduced violence in Iraq. Violence in Iraq was indeed down, but some people pointed out that diplomatic developments, such as al-Sadr's ceasfire and the "Anbar awakening", might be the real reason. McCain didn't like that, probably because it sounded too Democratic: diplomatic solutions more effective than just throwing troops at the problem. So he argued back... by saying the surge caused the Anbar awakening!
The Anbar awakening, a tentative alliance between the US and local Sunni leaders to oppose insurgents, began before the surge was proposed.
So on Iraq, just like on Iran, McCain is fundamentally clueless about the most basic facts.
Now when I hear about McCain making a stupid error like calling Sudan "Somalia", or talking about the nonexistent "Iraq-Pakistan border" I see it differently. Some wonder if it's his age causing him to slip up like this so frequently, but I think these are the kinds of mistakes he wouldn't make if he really knew about the rest of the world. You don't repeatedly confuse who is allied with whom in Iraq simply because the words "Sunni" and "Shia" get mixed up in your head - you do that if you don't know, and you're trying to remember the roles of the various groups in Iraq as if they were just similar-sounding words.
And then... and then... this happened and completely boggled my mind.
Interviewed by a reporter from one of Spain's largest newspapers*, El Pais, John McCain... seemed unaware that Spain even existed! Asked about Spain, he answered about Mexico. Asked about meeting with Spanish president Zapatero, he talks about "friends and enemies" and about US relations with "Latin America". She had to explicitly remind him that Spain was in Europe and he still didn't get it. He suggested that he'd meet with Zapatero if he were dedicated to "human rights, democracy, and freedom" (Spain is already a US ally, in NATO, and has troops in Afghanistan).
Maybe McCain is losing his mind. But this goes far beyond mixing up words, and it's dangerous.
* Correction: It was a radio reporter, whose station is owned by a Spanish company that also owns El Pais; the reporter herself does not work for that newspaper.
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no subject
In this case, he just picked the wrong stock phrase.
"My fellow Americans, I ask for your votes..."
"My fellow prisoners were disheartened..."
Both of these are the sorts of phrases McCain is likely to say at some point. Humans have very associative language facilities, so words you say can easily prime successive words. Since McCain says both "My fellow Americans" and "My fellow prisoners" a lot, it's easy to slip up and pick the wrong third word, especially if you're tired and have been making speeches for two months straight. It's kind of like Bush saying "I know how hard it is to put food on your family." There was a production error somewhere between "Feed your family" and "Put food on your table," but it doesn't reveal some dark secret that Bush thinks people put pancakes on their kids' heads or that John McCain thinks the people hearing his speech are actually in a POW camp. These are speech production errors and while they may reflect poorly on oratory skill, they don't say anything about the person's concepts. Dyslexia, spoonerisms, and other speech gaffes do not imply stupidity or lack of understanding.
Errors like talking about Latin America when asked about Spain are a bigger deal. It's understandable that someone's concepts of Spain and Latin America are associatively linked because of shared history. But when McCain avoids saying anything specific about Spain in an interview with a Spanish reporter asking about Spain, it's reasonable to assume that he (a) doesn't know or doesn't remember where Spain is or (b) Has things he wants to say about Latin America and doesn't have anything he wants to say about Spain. A lot of politicians practice (b) on a regular basis. I attended a debate between candidates for House of Representatives where the Republican tried to tie every question to her pet issue, Social Security running out of money. "What are acceptable uses of the U.S. military?" "If we fix the Social Security problem, we'll have more money to spend on the military." Watch Sarah Palin's VP debate performance for an example of this. She essentially started by saying "I'm not going to answer the questions you ask."
Not being able to speak extemporaneously about Spain with a Spaniard is not something I like to see in a presidential candidate. Obama has proven to be fairly good at speaking within the conversation at hand and not falling back on stock phrases and prepared statements. Making occasional speech errors like saying "prisoners" instead of "Americans" or "my Muslim faith" instead of "my alleged Muslim faith" is not something that's worth worrying about any more than Obama's frequent verbal pauses or McCain's high rate of blinking are relevant except insofar as they contribute to the candidate's overall skills as an orator.
no subject
We had a Libertarian candidate for governor a few years ago who answered every question by saying we need to get rid of the income tax. Some of the answered seemed ridiculously irrelevant (how will you protect endangered wetlands from development and pollution? if we had no income tax...) but at least she showed awareness of what question she was responding to, even if her leaps of logic were crazy. That McCain made no attempt to connect any of his answers to either Spain or Europe or Zapatero, and didn't mention Spain or Europe or Zapatero at all, makes this a very very weird case of b) if it is indeed b) - which is why I don't believe the campaign's post-hoc explanation that it is b).
However, I find the Iran bit more serious. In that one, he was clearly aware of the topic at hand and addressed it directly, and it was an issue he'd been making a centerpiece of his campaign at the time, yet he was flatly wrong on a very basic point, and arrogantly dismissive & contemptuous of the person who was right.