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McCain's Famous Temper
To be sure, he has not led a pristine public life. Three months after McCain joined the Senate, a flamboyant Arizona businessman named Charles H. Keating, Jr., asked him and four other Senators (later dubbed the Keating Five) for help with federal regulators investigating his failing thrift, Lincoln Savings & Loan. McCain -- along with Senator John Glenn -- was less involved with Keating than the others. But he wasn't blameless: His wife and her father had invested $359,000 in a Keating shopping center, and McCain had accepted, on Keating's expense, trips to the Bahamas, which he had kept quiet.
Still, he later refused to intercede in Keating's behalf (Keating called him a wimp and left McCain's office in a huff) and told federal regulators he "wouldn't want any special favors" for Lincoln Savings & Loan. In the end, McCain earned only a mild rebuke from the Senate Ethics Committee, which found that he'd violated no U.S. laws but had shown "poor judgment."
Then there's the matter of McCain's famous temper. Many is the time he has sent notes to staffers, and even fellow Senators, apologizing for one outburst or another. During the 2000 Presidential primaries, some Republicans working for Bush tried to undermine McCain's candidacy by disseminating talking points about his short fuse. The Bush people were implying that McCain lacked a proper Presidential disposition. "The issue became, Is this guy disqualified from being President because his [time as a POW] had unhinged him?" McCain biographer Robert Timberg said in an interview with Insight magazine. "I don't know who raised that, but whoever did so spat in the face of every Vietnam veteran."
The response from the McCain staff has been to try to turn a perceived flaw into an asset. One former McCain press secretary, Torie Clarke, explained it this way: "It's amazing the number of people who say, 'He's just so straightforward, he's so refreshing.' And, you know, his temper is a part of that."
McCain has his own way of spinning the temper issue: "I'm sure there have been times in the past when I have made remarks that are intemperate. But I hope I will never lose my capacity to become outraged by abuses of power and misuse of the trust of the American people. When I see $233 million for a bridge to an island in Alaska with 50 people on it, I'm angry. When I see Vladimir Putin consolidating the old Russian Empire, I get angry. When I see Hugo Chavez call the President of the United States all kinds of names, I get angry. So the question is, Do you act just out of control, or do you maintain your capacity for anger, which makes you even more motivated to carry out the responsibilities of your oath of office?"
Oh yes, there's that other potential impediment -- concerns about his health and age. During the summer of 2000, McCain was diagnosed with melanoma (which has been treated successfully, according to his doctors). Even without that grave health threat, political observers note, by 2008 he will be 72 years old -- too old, in the view of some, to seek the Presidency.
Asked how he'd answer voters who question whether he has the stamina to handle the White House job, McCain replies, "I think I would say that I'm older than dirt. That I have more scars than Frankenstein. That I've learned a few things along the way. Anyone who accompanied me in the two months before the last election, or while I was hiking in the Grand Canyon, can attest to the fact that I'm capable of keeping a very rigorous schedule."
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