While talking to the press in his home state on July 14th, McCain offered up this little gem:
"I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia."
Czechoslovakia, as many people know, hasn't been a country for the last sixteen or so years.
McCain made the exact same mistake again the next day:
"I regret some of the recent behavior that Russia has exhibited, and I'll be glad to talk about that later on, including reduction in oil supplies to Czechoslovakia after they agreed with us on a missile defense system..."
Then, less than a week later, he referenced the non-existent "Iraq/Pakistan Border."
Again, any one of these isn't particularly damning in and of itself. But the thing is, this isn't just a string of unfortunate blunders; it's a trend of McCain's that's been going on for a while. As much as I hate to link a YouTube-compilation video, this one does the job pretty well:
It's not just one or two things spread across a few years. He constantly mixes up basic geopolitical facts, something a presidential candidate has no business doing. I look at all of these incidents in conjunction with each other, and one word comes to mind: "Senility."