THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN’S PAKISTAN PROBLEM…. In Friday night’s debate, John McCain identified the new president of Pakistan as “Qadari.” His name is actually Asif Ali Zardari. McCain also insisted that Barack Obama doesn’t “understand” that “there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came to power.” It was McCain who didn’t understand that Pakistan wasn’t a “failed state” in 1999.
But the campaign’s Pakistan problem seemed to get even worse last night, when McCain’s running mate fielded a couple of questions in south Philadelphia last night. A local student asked about foreign policy.
“How about the Pakistan situation?,” asked Rovito, who said he was not a Palin supporter. “What’s your thoughts about that?”
“In Pakistan?,” she asked, looking surprised.
“What’s going on over there, like Waziristan?”
“It’s working with [Pakistani president] Zardari to make sure that we’re all working together to stop the guys from coming in over the border,” she told him. “And we’ll go from there.”
Rovito wasn’t finished. “Waziristan is blowing up!,” he said.
“Yeah it is,” Palin said, “and the economy there is blowing up too.”
“So we do cross border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan you think?,” Rovito asked.
“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin responded, before moving on to greet other voters.
Didn’t McCain just say Obama was wrong for endorsing this policy? Didn’t he spend part of the debate lecturing Obama, saying, “You don’t say that out loud”?
