Spanish Wars

Dan McCarthy picks up on an odd passage from Game Change:

They sat Palin down at a table in the suite, spread out a map of the world, and proceeded to give her a potted history of foreign policy. They started with the Spanish civil war, then moved on to world war one, world war two, the cold war…

Assuming that Heilemann and Halperin have this right, this might fit in with the weird strain of conservative admiration for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War that occasionally re-emerges, but it is almost too much to believe that Palin’s handlers were this ideologically obsessed that they would waste time with a foreign policy novice discussing a conflict in which the U.S. took no part. No, Palin’s tutors must have been covering the Spanish-American War. Given McCain’s love of all things T.R., it seems difficult to imagine that this would be neglected in Palin’s lessons. This actually fits the scene much better and makes sense. The authors must have mistakenly described what was covered.