In the midst of a near world-wide financial melt-down, Osama Bin Laden, Putin, Kim Jong-il and many others got some good sleep, courtesy of McPain Callin'. In the meantime, we finally got to understand what the Bush Administration and the GOP have meant all these years when they said they wanted to remake the world's geography.
During an interview in Miami, McPain was asked whether he would meet Spain's Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. From the interview, it was obvious that Ms. Palin's sidekick was clueless about which world leader he was being asked. He also seemed to have no idea about where Spain is located, but we cannot take him to task for that. After all, it has been a couple of centuries since the Mediterranean nation was the most powerful country in the western world. One must also consider the possibility that his gaffe was a Freudian slip, part of a secret Republican desire to put all the pesky Spanish speaking peoples of the world in one place.
Further to his credit, McCain thinks Spain is part of a Mexican city (Mérida), the capital of the state of Yucatán. At least he did not say that Spain was part of the Venezuelan State of Mérida.
That would have been absolutely egregious, considering the highly publicized skirmish between King Don Juan Carlos and Hugo Chávez a few months ago during the Ibero-American summit. Who could forget those famously brief words: «¿Por qué no te callas?»McPain clearly demonstrated he knows which world leaders are friends and foes of the United States. In the process, he also gave ample evidence as to why he and the moose shooter should be entrusted to police the world. While he wants to put, undoubtedly for safe and sound management purposes, all the Spanish speakers of the world South of the Río Bravo, Ms. Palin lays high claims to understanding Russia because she can see a chunk of ice across the the Bering Strait.
The good thing for McPain is that his display of cosmopolitanism occurred the same week the U.S. financial system was melting down and threatening to take down the rest of the world with it. But if Putin, bin Laden, Kim Jong-il and others noticed, they must have had a chuckle and plenty of good sleep. For bin Laden, there must be great comfort knowing that if McCain cannot locate Spain on a map, there is no way in hell he can find Al-Qaeda's leader in cave (i.e., assuming McCain knows where Pakistan is). Putin must feel confident that if Ms. Palin delivers on her word of being willing to go to war with Russia, she will probably bomb any big chunk of Arctic ice that does not belong to Alaska. Putin now knows that even if Palin got to learn she bombed a place with no Russians, she would be gleeful about having one less enemy, for she no longer would have to sue to take the polar bear out the endangered species list.
In view of the foregoing plenty of other things that could fill volumes, it is ironic that the GOP still has the gull to talk about foreign governments having wackos in charge. Ahmadinejad may be a religious nut job trying to get a nuclear weapon, but he must secretly relish the idea of Palin being one heartbeat away from the U.S. presidency. For then a fellow religious fanatic, albeit a Christian one, will have command over the world's most awesome and destructive nuclear arsenal. Should that come to pass, let us hope that by then Ms. Palin will at least have learned how to pronounce nuclear.
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