McCain: A "Mad" Man?

As the Democrats prepare to go the distance, with the protracted battle for their party’s nomination not likely to be resolved for many months, their drama is the page-one political campaign news story these days.  Most of the stuff about John McCain is on page-two.  

Except for that TEMPER thing. 

Senator McCain’s propensity for volatility is a persistent albatross around his neck, as Rev. Wright’s rants SHOULD be to Senator Obama. 

Just this past week, the GOP standard-bearer-to-be addressed this issue yet again; dismissing speculation that his mercurial tendencies may “hinder his ability to serve as President of the United States.”  McCain, in fact, considers his temper a “minor thing” – especially when compared to the totality of his life and record.

His strategy seems to be to turn a lemon into lemonade by suggesting that there may very well be a role for anger in a McCain administration.  He thinks people might even want it that way.  He told one interviewer: “When I see corruption in Washington, when I see wasting needlessly of their tax dollars, when I see people behaving badly – they expect me to get angry, and I will get angry.”

That’s pretty novel – a campaign promise to get mad – sort of a “read my lips, but be prepared to delete the expletive.”

The fact is that we have a long history in this country of electing leaders who have a capacity for anger.  And John McCain may have more in common with past Presidents than the other would-be occupants of the White House this year.

It’s up to Americans to figure out whether or not that’s a good thing.

Lyndon Johnson’s temper was so much a part of his persona that he was considered by his devoted aide Bill Moyers to be a “tormented man.”  He said that the tall Texan “would just go within himself, just disappear – morose, self-pitying, angry.”  And the late journalist Hugh Sidey once said of LBJ that “there was an increasing worry about the President around town - a fear that his personal eccentricities were affecting policy.”

Some who worked closely around Ronald Reagan, the classic presidential Mr. Nice Guy, have told me that he had quite a temper.  He just managed to keep it out of public view most of the time. 

Of course, Richard Nixon’s anger-laced musings were captured on the infamous tapes. But his temper was well known by that time.  The anger didn’t surprise most Americans; the language did.