The Rain in Mexico Falls Mainly on the Plain

When the morally palsied try to be faith healers.

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

Yet it's all the same to John McCain. Today, during a Spanish newspaper interview, John McCain was asked in very specific terms if he'd meet with Spain's leader, President Zapatero. Even though the interview was conducted in English, the Spanish translation makes the English give and take sort of unintelligible. So McCain's answer, originally in English, is being translated into Spanish then back into English.

No problem, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and John Aravosis, who's a fluent Spanish speaker, is on the case and is giving us a pretty accurate transcript of McCain's bizarre (the most common word used to describe this interview) comments.

Anyway, the reporter asked McCain if he would meet with President Zapatero. McCain started rambling on about Mexico (???) and Latin America and shakily drawing a very vague line in the sand between us and our enemies.

The reporter kept asking him until there was no possible mistake: "Will you meet with the Spanish president if you get elected?"

Again, McCain says,

"I will meet with any leader who has the same principles and philosophy as us in terms of human rights, democracy, and freedom and I will stand up to those who do not."

Alright. The real issue here is not whether or not John McCain thinks that Spain is in Latin America and not Europe. We know that, as with economics, he's not that swift when it comes to geography.

I think the real issue here is that McCain is adopting a harder line attitude than even the stiff pricks in the Bush/Cheney administration. True, President Zapatero, widely labeled a "socialist" like Hugo Chavez, created friction by making good on a campaign promise to get his people out of Iraq ASAP. However, he's stayed behind in Afghanistan and has proven to be a valued and steady ally in our so-called war on terror. The Bush administration has mellowed toward Zapatero's administration and for good reason.

McCain, with his "Us vs. Them" mentality, is threatening here to be even more of a hard line stiff prick than even those in the Bush administration. It could be that McCain refusing to say one way or the other whether or not he'd meet with Spain's president could've been what he perceived to be a clever political dodge by pretending to not know the difference between Spain and Mexico, in lumping in with other Latin American bad guys Europe's Zapatero.

It's the saber-rattling that worries me, the Us vs Them, "Bring 'em on!" mindset that's worked so disastrously for us over the last eight years, one coming from a guy who, during an election year, in full view of a nation wearied of war, is irresponsibly cockwanding at Russia and Iran.

Like Bush did with Iraq even during his own first presidential campaign.