Okay, a moment to take stock on the embarrassing McCain gaffe. As noted earlier, despite the fact that McCain repeatedly suggests that Spain is a country in Latin America, McCain’s foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann, insists that McCain wasn’t confused, knew exactly who Zapatero was and meant every word of what he said. So with the McCain campaign sticking to its guns, let’s review the possibilities of what happened here.

Option #1: McCain is so addled he not only doesn’t know who Zapatero is but doesn’t even know where Spain is located.

Option #2: McCain was not confused but actually meant his very belligerent comments about Spain and the Zapatero government (Scheunemann’s line).

Option #3: Through some mixture of confusion and inability to understand the interviewer’s accent, McCain was confused about who he was talking about and decided to wing it, assuming that the person he was being asked about was some other left-wing strong man from Latin America and answering with the standard boilerplate about standing up to America’s enemies.

So let’s run through the options. I do think McCain’s age and sharpness are real issues and legitimate campaign issues. But while I think it’s possible that McCain’s doesn’t remember who ‘Zapatero’ is, I obviously don’t believe that in a calm moment he wouldn’t be able to locate Spain on a map. So let’s rule out option one is a possible but unlikely option.

So what about option #2? It’s true that the neocons around McCain really do not like Zapatero. There are several nonsensical reasons but it at least started with his position against the Iraq War — and the fact that he shortcircuited right wing efforts to exploit the ghastly Madrid train bombings. So it is true that they don’t like him. But this option isn’t credible either for two and possible three reasons. First, in the exchange, McCain repeatedly refers to Spain as a country in Latin America. So if Randy really wants to stick to this explanation, he needs to explain why McCain thinks Spain is a country in Latin America, which I assume he doesn’t want to do. You just can’t have it both ways. Either he misunderstood at some level what he was being asked or he has a presidential disqualifying level of ignorance about geography. The second reason is that back in April McCain explicitly said that he wanted to move past earlier disagreements with Spain and said specifically that he wanted to Zapatero to visit him at the White House if he is elected president. So even if we set aside the geographical confusion, McCain’s camp would need to explain why he’s changed his policy 180 degrees since April. A possible third explanation is that McCain would not take such a confrontational stance toward a NATO ally. But let’s be honest, I wouldn’t put it past him. Still, one and two are dispositive.

So we’re on to option #3. Some version of option #3 is the only credible answer. Whether it was because of ignorance, confusion or inability to understand what the interviewer was saying, McCain clearly didn’t understand what he was being asked. And rather than stop and say, I didn’t understand your question, could you restate it?, (Or, who are you referring to?) he decided to wing it and assumed he was being asked a question about another Latin American strong man bad guy. This is simply the only credible explanation that takes account of all the evidence. I think it’s a generous read to conclude that the only issue was that McCain couldn’t understand the interviewer’s accent. But it’s definitely possible. Even that, though, puts McCain in a pretty bad light.

Equally bad, Randy Scheunemann would rather further inflame Spanish-American relations by ridiculously insisting that McCain knew exactly what he saying than admit the obvious — that he didn’t understand the question. It wouldn’t be that surprising. But given McCain has premised his whole campaign on foreign policy experience they’ve clearly decided it would simply be too damaging to admit he was either a) confused, b) ignorant or c) reckless enough to spout off aggressive remarks when he didn’t even know who he was being asked about.

It seems the Post’s Karen DeYoung isn’t buying Randy Scheunemann’s line that McCain wasn’t confused just hardcore (from an online chat this morning) …

McCain seemed sort of foggy in the interview, much of which was about U.S. relations with Latin American baddies Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales. Then interviewer asked about Zapatero and McCain seemed to be winging it, appearing to think that Zapatero was the leader of someplace in Latin America and reciting the same rote answer as for the others about not meeting with leaders who don’t support freedom and the U.S.

Meanwhile, Joe Klein thinks it’s not such a hot idea to put “a chill in the relationship with one of our NATO allies simply because McCain misheard a question.”

Meanwhile, Marc Ambinder gave Randy Scheunemann another bite at the apple after it became clear that McCain said precisely the opposite in April of what Scheunemann says he intended to say yesterday. Saith Schuenemann …

In this week’s interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally. If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America’s adversaries. It’s called keeping youtr options open, unlike Senator Obama who has publically committed to meeting some of the world’s worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office.

So saying he might meet with Zapatero might amount to making “reckless promises to meet America’s adversaries”? It’s not easy being as deep in a hole as Randy is at the moment. But America’s adversaries? He might want to take a glance back at the NATO charter, which of course commits the United States to treating any attack on Spain as an attack on America. He’s really willing to create a diplomatic incident just to avoid admitting that McCain got confused about what he was being asked. On the other hand, I guess Randy’s nonchalance about binding NATO treating obligations puts his insistence on getting Georgia into NATO into a rather different light.

For the moment I guess he’s sticking to the line that McCain actually has Spain on probation as a potential member of the Axis of Evil 2.0. And on this US News has some helpful follow up.

Former Sen. George “Macaca” Allen (R-VA) will be a featured speaker at a minority outreach rally Virginia Republicans have thrown together.

Did Sarah Palin really take a pay cut as mayor, as she claims?

From the Post:

Putnam Investments has closed a $12.3 billion money-market fund to limit losses to its investors, the large mutual fund company said today. The highly unusual announcement is the latest sign that tremendous financial pressures are now threatening even some of the safest kinds of investments.

The Prime Money Market Fund was open only to institutional investors. Putnam said in a statement that its board decided to close the fund last night after receiving a large number of redemption requests. The company said it could honor those requests only by selling assets at a loss, reducing the value of the remaining shares.

Putnam said it decided instead to liquidate the fund and spread any losses evenly among all the investors. “We wanted to treat all shareholders equally,” said spokeswoman Laura McNamara. She said it was “premature” to discuss how much of a loss, if any, shareholders will incur.

At TPMCafe Reed Hundt, former FCC chairman, takes us through a series of charts and graphs that show some of the most troubling trends in the American economy.

He writes: “At least when Bush came in, he was dealing with a huge surplus. He frittered it away. But McCain has nothing to fritter away.”

Ouch … (from CNN) …

Sarah Palin likes to tell voters around the country about how she “put the government checkbook online” in Alaska. On Thursday, Palin suggested she would take that same proposal to Washington.

“We’re going to do a few new things also,” she said at a rally in Cedar Rapids. “For instance, as Alaska’s governor, I put the government’s checkbook online so that people can see where their money’s going. We’ll bring that kind of transparency, that responsibility, and accountability back. We’re going to bring that back to D.C.”

There’s just one problem with proposing to put the federal checkbook online – somebody’s already done it. His name is Barack Obama.

Wow, Time’s Michael Scherer might want to dial in on the Social Security policy debate a bit more thoroughly next time. Ouch. Not pretty. (He doesn’t seem to know any of the backstory about privatization, private accounts, personal accounts, etc. … Did I mention ‘ouch’?

The McCain camp is muscling the local press covering Trooper-Gate in Alaska.

Georgian President Saakashvili denies hiring Washington lobbyists …

President Saakashvili has strongly denied that his administration was in any kind of “lobbying relations” with Randy Scheunemann, a foreign policy advisor of the Republican presidential candidate, John McCain.

He was asked about the matter at the BBC’s HARDtalk, when President Saakashvili was speaking about the huge support Georgia had in the United States.

“We’ve been getting huge support from the U.S. administration,” he said and added that this support was coming not only from President Bush and his administration, but also from the both presidential candidates in the United States.

When saying this, an anchor, Stephen Sackur, interrupted Saakashvili and asked him: “Nobody would deny it for one second, that you have fantastic PR in Washington and many supporters, some say that partly because you spend millions of dollars on lobbying and PR in Washington not least with Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy advisor [Randy Scheunemann], he has received lot of money in his strategy organization [Orion Strategies] from your government; so you do have PR friends, but when it comes to practicalities what have the Americans have actually done for you to stop the Russians doing what they want on your territory?”

“You’ve just sounded like Mr. Putin right now,” Saakashvili responded with smile on his face. “What millions of dollars? What lobbyist?.. We do not have millions of money to spend for anything especially for lobbying.”

Needless to say, Saakashvili had McCain’s foreign policy Scheunemann on the payroll until quite recently. And he still retains Scheunemann’s firm.

(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader AR for the tip.)