As Election Day approaches, even Spanish-speaking radio hosts can’t resist the lure of “gotcha” questions.

Senator John McCain has recently interviewed on Radio Carocol Miami. You can listen to the interview in English here (it was later dubbed into Spanish).

Talking Points Memo and the rest of the blogosphere’s left side are whooping it up. McCain doesn’t know who the head of the Spanish government is!

Here is Josh Marshall:

At first it sounds like McCain is taking a hard neocon line against Prime Minister Zapatero, but as the interviewer continues to press the point, it becomes pretty obvious that McCain has no idea who she’s talking about.

His broad, generic answer is clearly meant to cover Latin American leaders generally, known and unknown — sort of a blanket “we’ll stand up to tinpot dictators” — even if they happen to be NATO prime ministers.

Marshall et al are arguing in bad faith.

McCain correctly names the leaders and accurately describes the political situations in Venezuela, Columbia, Bolivia and (later) Mexico. When the interviewer, whose thick accent makes her hard to understand at times, suddenly shifts to Spain, she says Zaperto’s name very quickly. For a moment, it sounds like she is talking about a rebel leader in a region of southern Mexico–and the interviewer is pushing very hard for McCain to agree to a meeting with the man.

It is, at best, unclear that McCain does not know whom she is speaking about. McCain certainly says nothing to that effect. And the interviewer, who says the name very quickly, does not identify the man on first reference.  She is playing gotcha.

Did she trap McCain? I would say no.

McCain is a canny enough politician not to agree to any meeting with any leader until the staff work has been done. That is why “summits” are mostly for show–the two staffs have already hammered out a deal. And he announced his general principles for meeting with foreign leaders (shared values about human rights, democracy et cetera).

McCain is also savvy enough not the insult the sitting government of a key NATO ally (that withdrew its forces from Iraq) by being too pointed in questioning Spain’s commitment to spreading democracy.

While only McCain knows for sure whether he actually knew that the interviewer was talking about the head of Spain, any fair-minded referee would have to say that this is either a pass for McCain or a draw.

That the left side of the blogosphere is so desperate to score it as win–proof that McCain isn’t fit to be president–is a sign of how they think the election is going.