Beware Subcomandante Zapatero!

John McCain, he of the purported decades of foreign policy experience, apparently doesn't know who the elected leader of Spain is, doesn't know where Spain is, or else simply won't back down once confronted.  None of these being hopeful signals of a potential McCain foreign policy.  

Here is Josh Marshall's breakdown of the reaction of the Spanish press:

In Spain, there seem to be two lines of thinking. The great majority appear to think the McCain was simply confused and didn't know who Zapatero was -- something you might bone up on if you were about to do an interview with the Spanish press. The assumption seems to be that since he'd already been asked about Castro and Chavez that McCain assumed Zapatero must be some other Latin American bad guy. A small minority though think that McCain is simply committed to an anti-Spanish foreign policy since he's still angry about Spain pulling it's troops out of Iraq. Finally, a few of those who lean toward the first view speculate that McCain may have confused Zapatero with the Zapatista rebel group in Mexico.

My money is on the Zapatero/Zapatista confusion.  McCain doesn't speak Spanish, his mind had already been focused on suspicious, indigenous Latin American revolutionary types like Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez (who once called George Bush the devil!), and he heard "Zapat___" and that was all he needed to know to form his response. 

Let me clarify for John McCain: Subcomandante Marcos is not the elected leader of the European country that colonized most of Latin America.  He does not have a seat at the table at NATO.  He does wear a ski mask and tattered revolutionary cap in all his public photos.

Let's hope that John McCain can figure this out before taking office this coming January.