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Last Updated: Oct 15, 2008 - 12:35:40 PM |
Right at the outset of his political career, John McCain’s hostile and
explosive temperament was evident, according to a Sept. 8 article in
Time cover lined “Honor Bound.” Writers James Carney and Michael
Grunwald report that in his first race for the House, McCain threatened
to beat up a primary opponent (the opponent had called his ex-wife
looking for dirt on him). Then, in his first run for the Senate, McCain
vilified his adversary in that race after he accused McCain of selling
out to special interests (NB: McCain was already close friends with
savings and loan king Charles Keating by this point). Not for nothing
did McCain carry the moniker “McNasty” during his prep school years.
McCain’s struggle with a volcanic and unstable temper has apparently
been life-long, and a fair amount of information has accumulated
relating to his problem in this regard. The most comprehensive
secondary sources I have found on the subject are the section called
“Senator Hothead” in David Brock and Paul Waldman’s book Free Ride:
John McCain and the Media, the article “McCain: A Question of
Temperament” in the April 20, 2008 issue of the Washington Post, and
the recent piece in Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson called “Make-Believe
Maverick” (there are also sources online too numerous to mention here).
McCain’s relations with colleagues in the Senate, including, or
especially, fellow Republican senators, have often been marked by
unpleasant confrontations. He once said to Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM),
then chairman of the Senate Budget Committee: “Only an asshole would
put together a budget like this.” McCain added: “I wouldn’t call you an
asshole unless you really were an asshole.” When Sen. Charles Grassley
(R-IA) inquired of him during an exchange: “Are you calling me stupid?”
he received the reply: “No, I’m calling you a fucking jerk.”
Reportedly, during a Senate Republican luncheon, when a colleague
demanded an apology because McCain had called him a “shithead,” McCain
responded: “I apologize, but you’re still a shithead.”
In the midst of Senate debate on the immigration bill McCain was
supporting at the time (he later repudiated this legislation in the
Republican primaries, though it was essentially his bill), McCain said
to John Cornyn (R-TX), “Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone in
the room.” McCain screamed at Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), after Shelby
voted against confirmation for Secretary of Defense of McCain’s friend
and mentor John Tower, that he was going to “pay for” his vote. In
1995, while McCain was making a long-winded statement before Senate
Armed Services Committee, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) asked McCain
politely “Is the Senator about through?” Reportedly McCain then engaged
the 92-year-old legislator in a scuffle on the Senate floor. Former
Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH) has said of McCain—perhaps understatedly—that he
has “very few friends” in the Senate.
McCain’s threat to Richard Shelby is not an isolated occurrence; he is
well known to have a thoroughgoing vindictive streak. The most widely
told story in this regard involves Sandra Dowling, former
superintendent of schools in Maricopa County, Arizona, where McCain’s
home city of Phoenix is situated. When Barbara Barrett, wife of
then-Intel chief executive officer Craig Barrett, was running against
McCain buddy Gov. Fife Symington (a corrupt politician who subsequently
did jail time), McCain demanded that Dowling withdraw her endorsement
of Barrett. When Dowling refused, McCain threatened to destroy her.
Dowling’s son soon lost his appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy.
Nor are mere voters exempt from the wrath of McCain. In 1991, during
the perfervid controversy over the nomination of pornography-loving,
middle-of-his-law-school-class Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme
Court, Phoenix resident Diane Smith composed a letter to McCain
complaining about what she saw as his unfairness to Anita Hill. United
States Senator John McCain called the sixty-three-year-old woman up and
berated her over the telephone. McCain “ranted on and on about what
nerve I had to question his integrity,” Smith has recounted. “He was
shouting. I was absolutely taken aback.” When McCain finished the
tirade, he slammed the phone down without waiting for a response from
his constituent.
Early in his political career, McCain was close to Pat Murphy, former
editor and publisher of the conservative Arizona Republic. When in 1989
the newspaper ran a story critical of McCain’s sandbagging of Arizona
Democratic Governor Rose Mofford when she testified before the Senate
Interior Committee about their state’s crucial Central Arizona Project,
McCain telephoned Murphy and screamed at him, “I know you’re out to get
me!” McCain wouldn’t speak to Murphy or any of his reporters again.
Eleven years later, during the 2000 presidential primaries, the McCain
campaign refused an Arizona Republic political correspondent a seat on
the so-called “Straight Talk Express.”
Pat Murphy wrote in an editorial in March of that year: “If McCain were
to become president, Americans would wake up to more than a
commander-in-chief with a prickly temperament and a low-boiling point.
McCain is a man who carries get-even grudges. He cannot endure
criticism. He controls by fear. He’s consumed with self-importance. He
shifts blame.” Murphy had written in an editorial the previous year:
“There is also reason to question whether McCain has the temperament,
and the political approach and skills, we want in the next president of
the United States.”
Three Republican senators who experienced McCain’s volatility first
hand have spoken more pointedly. “McCain’s ire is all too real. This
has prompted questions about whether his temperament is suited to the
office of commander-in-chief,” Pete Domenici has said. Sen. Thad
Cochran (R-Miss.), whom McCain terrified when he physically roughed up
a Sandanista official in his presence during their visit to Nicaragua
in the 1980’s, has said, “The thought of his being president sends a
cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hot headed. He loses his
temper and he worries me.” And Bob Smith said, “McCain’s temper would
place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world
perhaps in danger.”
And retired Navy pilot Phillip Butler, who in addition to being a
classmate of John McCain at Annapolis was a fellow POW at the Hanoi
Hilton, wrote: “I can verify that John has an infamous reputation for
being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper that many have
experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not the finger I
want next to the nuclear button.”
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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