McCain's Spain-gaffe interviewer: McCain not confused, just dodging question.

I think it is both: McCain is too confused to answer questions.

TPM:

I just got off the phone with the Miami reporter who interviewed John McCain and elicited the Spain-goof answer that we've been writing about on the front page of TPM -- an interview in which McCain appeared to grow confused about who his interviewer was talking about.

She tells me she doesn't believe that McCain didn't know who Prime Minister Zapatero is or where Spain was. Instead, she believes that McCain was deliberately ducking the question of whether he'd meet with the Spanish Prime Minister.

"I didn't get the impression that he didn't know who Zapatero was or where Spain was," the reporter, Yoli Cuello, told me. "Honestly, what I thought was that he didn't want to answer the question with a yes or no answer."

(You can listen to the interview here. To recap: When asked to discuss relations with Spain and whether he would meet with Zapatero, McCain at first segued into a discussion of Latin America. When the reporter repeated Zapatero's name, McCain again talked about Latin America. And when the reporter stressed that she was talking about Spain, McCain wouldn't say whether he'd meet with the Spanish leader.)

Pressed on why McCain would keep seguing into a discussion of Latin America if he knew who she was talking about, Cuello said: "I think because I was talking with him before about Latin America. He was not giving me a straight answer. I wasn't expecting a straight answer."

Asked why she thought McCain would duck the question, she said: "The policies regarding Iraq. Because he's a Republican. The [Bush] administration doesn't have good relations with Zapatero."

A quick word on this. There is a way of interpreting what happened while allowing that McCain did know who Zapatero was. What could have happened is that on the first hearing of the question, he simply ducked it by returning to Latin America, as Cuello says.

Then, on the second hearing, where she repeated the name Zapatero without repeating "Spain," he didn't hear the name properly or was unable to track it back to the first mention of him. So he talked about Latin America again. Then on the third asking, when she stressed she was talking about Spain, McCain refused to answer because he genuinely doesn't want to commit to meeting with this particular NATO ally.