"Palling around with dictators" was used against Reagan, Bush I, Nixon, Helms, etc. Basically, liberals used to question our government's tendency to prop-up right-wing dictators because they either beat back a socialist or communist regime, or they regularly beat down their opponents, who either had direct support or who might sympathize with our old Cold War foes.

"Terrorist" is the new meme, so that's why it may sound different than the things that we used to throw at the conservatives, but sitting down with dictators has been the policy of the United States for generations and it was recently endorsed by every living Secretary of State, so it's really nothing new.

BTW: I haven't looked, but I have to guess that at some point, McCain probably met with Saddam Hussein because though we didn't support him for his anti-socialist positions, we did underwrite his government as a control on post-revolution Iran.

(We had previously provided lots of aid to prop-up the Iranian monarch and we had used covert ops to depose of a democratically-elected Iranian Prime Minister because he had Soviet ties)