Increasingly, Senator John McMad, the presumptive GOP candidate for President, is being exposed as a pathologically angry person unfit to be in the Senate much less serve as President of the United States. Therefore, any poll results now showing McCain running neck and neck with Obama and Clinton can be dismissed as irrelevant. The media has yet to turn their attention with any serious and prolonged scrutiny to Sen. McNasty’s record of menacing and assaultive behavior. Besides, they have been diverted weightier issues of presidential qualifications and suitability like Barack Obama’s lapel pins (or lack thereof) and his use of words like "bitter" and "cling."
But when they do eventually discover a thriving market of Americans sensibly concerned about the prospect of a pathologically angry man becoming the President, they will have no end of evidence and witnesses, some within the ranks of the GOP. At a minimum the frightening quality of the TV commercials about McCain this Autumn could easily rival the Willie Horton ads George H.W. Bush ran against Gov. Michael Dukakis. They will probably be more frightening because in this case Willie Horton will be the GOP candidate for President himself, John McCain. The commercials will perform an important public service.
Let’s examine some of the trends in John McCain’s non-official rap sheet.
John McCain Intimidates and Demeans Women
As I have written elsewhere, I fully expect female supporters of Hillary Clinton to support Barack Obama after he captures the nomination for the Democratic Party. I cannot imagine how anyone with a conscience could possibly support a misogynistic verbal batterer like John McCain.
It is already known:
• He once publicly referred to his wife as a "trollop" and a "cunt"
• He said Chelsea Clinton was ugly because Janet Reno was her father (a trifecta of insult implicitly trading on the right-wing libel that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian)
• He intimidated a female reporter on his campaign airplane when asked about his account of being asked to serve as Sen. John Kerry’s running mate in 2004.
But there is more just revealed thanks to the Washington Post:
In 1994, McCain tried to stop a primary challenge to the state's Republican governor, J. Fife Symington III, by telephoning his opponent, Barbara Barrett, the well-heeled spouse of a telecommunications executive, and warning of unspecified "consequences" should she reject his advice to drop out of the race. Barrett stayed in. At that year's state Republican convention, McCain confronted Sandra Dowling, the Maricopa County school superintendent and, according to witnesses, angrily accused her of helping to persuade Barrett to enter the race.
"You better get [Barrett] out or I'll destroy you," a witness claims that McCain shouted at her. Dowling responded that if McCain couldn't respect her right to support whomever she chose, that he "should get the hell out of the Senate." McCain shouted an obscenity at her, and Dowling howled one back.
But John McCain is a war hero. We shouldn’t let his verbal battery of women dissuade us about his manliness and bravery.
But John McCain is a war hero. We shouldn’t let his verbal battery of women dissuade us about his manliness and bravery.
John McCain Holds Grudges and Seeks Revenge
McCain strategist and co-author of five McCain books, Mark Salter, rationalizes McCain’s galloping fury:
"If he feels a challenge to his integrity, then he'll say something," Salter said. "If he thinks you betrayed him . . . he'll tell you, he'll be angry. . . . But he's also exceedingly forgiving."
The ruffian forgives the victim. How comforting. How co-dependent and enabling of Salter to say so.
But it seems that John McCain doesn’t always forgive immediately. In fact he can hold grudges for years, ones that fester and impel him to pounce and seek revenge at opportune moments:
During the early 1990s, McCain telephoned the office of Tom Freestone, a governmental official little known outside Arizona's Maricopa County. McCain had an unusual request. He wanted Freestone, then chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, to reject a job applicant named Karen S. Johnson, whose last governmental position had been in the office of a former Arizona governor and who had just interviewed for a position as an aide in Freestone's office.
A few years earlier, he had an angry exchange with her while she was the secretary for Republican Arizona Gov. Evan Meacham, who was impeached and forced out of office for campaign finance violations.
This wasn't an isolated incident. It appears to be part of a pattern:
During roughly the same period, McCain requested the firing of an aide to Arizona's senior U.S. senator, Dennis DeConcini, according to two top figures in DeConcini's office.
The aide, a veterans affairs expert named Judy Leiby, first ran into problems with McCain in the late '80s, when she sought to correct what she regarded as a McCain misstatement about DeConcini's record on a veterans issue. She was attending a Phoenix meeting between McCain and some veterans when she rebutted a McCain assertion that DeConcini, a Democrat, favored a bill that included a cut of some veterans benefits. "That is incorrect," Leiby said, detailing the specifics of DeConcini's position as McCain listened stonily.
Sometime afterward, McCain called DeConcini and asked that he dismiss Leiby, insisting to the senator that his aide had become a toxic, partisan figure.
It shouldn’t be overlooked that both Johnson and Leiby are women.
Women can be the subjects of McCain’s grudges revenge and so can the young:
[In 1982] Arizona Republican Party held its Election Night celebration for all its candidates at a Phoenix hotel, where the triumphant basked in the cheers of their supporters and delivered victory statements on television.
After McCain finished his speech, he returned to a suite in the hotel, sat down in front of a TV and viewed a replay of his remarks, angry to discover that the speaking platform had not been erected high enough for television cameras to capture all of his face -- he seemed to have been cut off somewhere between his nose and mouth.
A platform that had been adequate for taller candidates had not taken into account the needs of the 5-foot-9 McCain, who left the suite and went looking for a man in his early 20s named Robert Wexler, the head of Arizona's Young Republicans, which had helped make arrangements for the evening's celebration. Confronting Wexler in a hotel ballroom, McCain exploded, according to witnesses who included Jon Hinz, then executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. McCain jabbed an index finger in Wexler's chest.
"I told you we needed a stage," he screamed, according to Hinz. "You incompetent little [expletive]. When I tell you to do something, you do it."
But when, as a toddler, John McCain wasn’t holding his breath and fainting "during moments of fury," later, as he grew older, he moved around to various military bases because his father was an admiral in the Navy collecting stars. It gave him a "chip on [his] shoulder," he recalled recently.
Therefore, he’s entitled to menace people now because childhood trauma is always seen as a valid explanation by Republicans for anti-social behavior.
No One is Spared John McCain’s Wrath
The list of victims on John McCain’s unofficial rap sheet is impressive for it admits no class or partisan distinctions. He is an equal opportunity thug. His victims include:
• Sen. Charles Grassley
• Sen. Bob Smith
• Sen. John Cornyn
• Sen. Richard Shelby
• Sen. Thad Cochran
• Sen. Ted Kennedy
• Rep. Robert Torricelli
• Navy Secretary John Dalton
• Sen. Pete Domenici
• Sen. Strom Thurmond (age is no barrier to McCain)
• Rep. Rick Renzi
It’s a chore keeping up with all of them, so I’ve probably overlooked other victims and as with most serial abusers, there are probably more victims we will never hear about.
That McCain’s anger knows no distinctions, that his victims can be comparatively vulnerable or powerful, indicates his anger is a pervasive trait, one that goes to his fitness to be President of the most powerful nation in the world. According to former GOP Senator Bob Smith,
"I've witnessed a lot of his temper and outbursts" ... "For me, some of this stuff is relevant. It raises questions about stability. . . ."
"His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him."
Smith has been on the receiving end of McMad’s anger:
Smith, whose service in the Navy included a tour on the waters in and around Vietnam, said he stood stunned one day when McCain declared around several of their colleagues that Smith wasn't a real Vietnam War veteran. "I was in the combat zone, off the Mekong River, for 10 months," Smith said. "He went on to insult me several times. I wasn't on the land; I guess that was his reasoning. . . . He suggested I was masquerading about my Vietnam service. It was very hurtful. He's gotten to a lot of people [that way]."
This led Smith to observe a telling dynamic beneath McCain’s anger:
"It's more than just temper. It's this need of his to show you that he's above you -- a sneering, condescending attitude."
Indeed. So, let’s be done with all this rationalizing nonsense that McCain’s anger is directed at those who show him an undeserved "lack of respect" or, as he described it on FOX News, is directed mostly at "corruption" or "people misbehaving badly"—unless, that is, we define the disrespectful, the corrupt and the misbehaved as those John McCain finds threatening to his incessantly fragile ego.
And while we acknowledge McCain’s valiant service in Viet Nam under horrific conditions, let’s not excuse his disparagement for the valiant service of others like Sen. Bob Smith. Let’s also not fail to wonder if Republican Party held its Election Night celebration for all its candidates at a Phoenix hotel, where the triumphant basked in the cheers of their supporters and delivered victory statements on television. stems from the tangled psyche of man beset with the competitive anxiety that any focus on the heroic service of others might somehow eclipse his.
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sources