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Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain Politics

Fun Fact About McCain #3: Temper Tantrum in Nicaragua

McCain once attempted to strangle someone on a diplomatic mission.

Seems True. McCain denies it, but Republican Senator Thad Cochran remembers McCain’s volatile presence while negotiating with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
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Election 2008 McCain National Security Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Fun Fact About McCain #1: Panicking in a Crisis

[digg-reddit-me]John McCain has a history of over-personalizing and overreacting during crises – which has led a number of top former military officials and others who know him to voice concerns about McCain’s fitness.

True. Between McCain’s taunting of Putin and his scapegoating of SEC chief Cox, he has shown this tendency several times in the past month.
  • As one general said, “I am a little worried by his knee-jerk response factor. I think it is a little scary. I think this guy’s first reactions are not necessarily the best reactions. I believe that he acts on impulse.”
  • As another said, “One of the things the senior military would like to see when they go visit the president is a kind of consistency, a kind of reliability…McCain has got a reputation for being a little volatile.”
  • Conservative columnist and curmudgeon George F. Will wrote of McCain’s reaction to the current financial crisis: “Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama…[The more one sees of McCain’s] impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events the less confidence one has [in him] …It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?”
  • A Republican Senator stated, “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”