Obama Spanks McCain in Defense of Spain

Last Friday night while I was asleep in my bed, dreaming of butterflies and rainbows and all things sublime, Barack Obama and John McCain were giving their all in the first official debate of this presidential campaign. I felt a little unpatriotic sleeping through the whole thing, but we are six hours ahead here and at 3:00 am on a Friday night I am either out on the town or asleep in my bed. Besides, I reasoned, if John McCain may or may not make this debate a priority, why should I? I resolved to download the debate on Saturday morning and happily turned in for the night. This was a sort of delusional wishful thinking, much like when I brought books along on weekend trips in college, knowing full well I wouldn’t be doing any studying. But my guilty conscience was appeased just as it was in my carefree college days, and I slept like a little baby.

After a lounging about a bit after breakfast the next day, I mustered up the courage to turn on the computer and see how things turned out. I expected to be disappointed by the candidates as I am generally am by all politicians, but I was hopeful that something productive could have come from the debate. Don’t worry, I won’t bore you folks with the American news reports, as I’m sure you’ve had your fill of them already. With a global financial crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions on the horizon, the world’s eyes would be looking to the two US presidential candidates for their take on things, and I was very interested in hearing what the Spanish press had to say about it. But nothing could have prepared me for the headlines, which were mostly along the same lines: Obama azota a McCain en el debate con su hostilidad hacía España. This oddly worded headline translates to something like: Obama Spanks McCain with His Own Hostility towards Spain in the Debate.

Upon recovering from the laughing fit which inevitably ensued from such a silly headline about such an important event, I was finally able to read on to find out how exactly McCain’s supposed hostility towards Spain was used by Obama in said spanking. You see, about a week before the debate McCain stated in an interview with a Miami radio station that he may or may not receive Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to the White House because “he wasn’t sure if (Spain) was on our side”. A chivalrous Obama apparently defended Spain’s honor as a NATO ally, making him the Spanish media’s knight in shining armor.

In case you were worried about Spain’s opinion on the rest of the debate, there was a slight mention of the economic crisis, the situation in the Middle East and the possibility of hunting down Bin Laden in Pakistan. But overall, several news sources were compelled to agree that the the debate was downright boring. In one Spanish newspaper’s exact words, the audience “was incredibly bored by two well behaved candidates who spoke about matters of little importance to an electorate which is not used to thinking about the rest of the world / se ha aburrido como una ostra ante dos candidatos muy comedidos que hablaban sobre temas que importan poco un electorado acostumbrado a no pensar en el mundo.” That’s right, the Spanish media totally bitchslapped both the presidential candidates AND the American people in one fell swoop. You didn’t think the Spanish media would actually praise the US, did you? I mean it’s one thing to give Obama props for defending the great nation of Spain, but the Spanish are anti-American after all. Except, of course, for the fact that they can’t get enough of American movies, music, literature, technology, etc…

So perhaps I'll have to rely on the CNN, FoxNews and the New York Times for my election coverage after all. Still , the Spanish viewpoint is undeniably entertaining...