John McCain: A Man with a Temper

By Eddie Griffin

A few weeks ago, I pointed out that John McCain’s most vulnerable area was his fiery temper, which could very well be his undoing. The one thing a man cannot hide is what’s on the inside of his heart.

General Wesley Clark struck a nerve with McCain when he said that “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down” was not a qualification to be president.” To clarify, Gen. Clark elaborated that McCain’s military service, “by itself”, qualify him for the Whitehouse. (Read: “A Man among Men: General Wesley Clark”)

The off-the-cuff matter-of-fact statement reciprocated an outcry from McCain. “I think the time has come to not just repudiate Gen. Clark, but to cut him loose,” McCain advised Senator Barack Obama.

Repudiate General Clark? Cut him loose?

Is McCain that touchy? If he would repudiate a man of General Clark’s stature, what would he do in diplomacy?

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) tells of a physical confrontation John McCain had with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega while on a diplomatic mission in 1987.
"I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don’t know what he was telling him, but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns, and we were there on a diploma- tic mission," Cochran recalled.

Cochran startled many people this year with comments about McCain’s temper… He told The Boston Globe that "the thought of (McCain) being president sends a cold chill down my spine." McCain,” Cochran said, "is erratic. He loses his temper, and he worries me."

A former fighter pilot who goes around singing, “Bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran”, worries me too. Forty years ago, it was “Bomb, bomb, bomb, Hanoi”, which is how he wound up a POW in the Hanoi Hilton. Since that time, the song hasn’t changed very much as McCain inches his way one step closer to the nuclear trigger.