The dangers of mental search-and-replace
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In John McCain's interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America this morning, he seemed to want to turn any discussion of "Afghanistan" into a discussion of Iraq, as in this exchange:
DS: Does [Obama] deserve the credit for saying that there should be more troops in Afghanistan, and
now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is saying just the same thing?
JM: Actually the chairman of the Joint Chiefs uh said yesterday
that it'd be very dangerous to do what Senator Obama wants to do in Iraq.
A bit later in the interview, he took this one substitution too far:
DS: Do you agree the situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent?
JM: Well, I think it's very serious. I mean, it's a serious situation.
DS: Not precarious and urgent?
JM: Oh I- I don't- know wha- exactly whether- we can run through the vocabulary, but it's a very-
it's a ((v-)) serious situation,
and- but there's a lot of things we need to do,
we ha- we have a lot of work to do, and I'm afraid-
that it's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border
I'm sure that Senator McCain meant to say "Afghanistan-Pakistan border", and committed the common type of speech error that replaces an intended word with another that is semantically close and contextually relevant. [Then again, there's a lot to like about Q. Pheevr's suggestion in the comments that "Perhaps 'the Iraq–Pakistan border' is the hip new name for what we used to call 'Iran.'"] For the most part, the press corps seems to be ignoring McCain's error — which seem appropriate to me — or else noting it in passing as a slip of the tongue. This is how most politicians' speech errors are treated, with one notable recent exception.
Q. Pheevr said,
July 21, 2008 @ 6:41 pm
Perhaps "the Iraq–Pakistan border" is the hip new name for what we used to call "Iran."
ST said,
July 21, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
I first read the mistake described in Huffingtonpost as another "gaffe," and assumed that McCain really did not know there was no Iraq-Pakistan border. I see now that it was probably a less serious mistake caused by the error that you describe. Nevertheless, McCain's made a lot of errors this campaign that can't be dismissed so easily.
Dave said,
July 21, 2008 @ 11:34 pm
McCain's first answer isn't a slip of the tongue; it's blatent subject-changing. As for the second, I think that McCain's handlers have drilled into him "things are going well in Iraq, keep mentioning Iraq" so much that he probably mutters "Iraq, surge, victory" in his sleep.
Mark P said,
July 22, 2008 @ 10:11 am
Of course everyone occasionally makes that kind of mistake and lots of others, especially in speech as opposed to writing. But I have found that the pattern of a person's speech is a pretty good indicator of his thought processes over the long term.