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Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate to become the next US president, is prone to uncontrollable fits of rage which those in his camp worry could be a liability, both in November's election and the job itself. His wife has defended his outbursts as signs of "passion". But even some of his friends and supporters worry that displays of irrational anger could prove disastrous if he became the most powerful man in the world, with a thermonuclear arsenal at his fingertips. A member of one of Washington's most respected Republican families told Sky News: "Everyone in Washington's political circles has...

After a few weeks of attempts by Democrats (and the media) to get John McCain to lose his temper publicly — with absolutely no success — John McCain has decided to embrace his passion rather than deny it.

Republican John McCain pretended to snarl when asked about his temper Wednesday in Michigan. "How dare you ask that question!" McCain said, chuckling. His questioner persisted, reading a comment by a fellow Republican, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, that the idea of McCain as the GOP presidential nominee sent a chill down his spine. "I'm all too familiar with the quote," said McCain, who has since smoothed things over with his colleague. McCain, whose temper has earned him the nickname "Senator Hothead" by more than one publication, said he does get angry — about corruption and runaway spending in Washington. "You...

An audience member ambushed John McCain on Thursday at an otherwise placid town hall meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, with a surprise question about whether he had ever called his wife by an obscene term. The man stood up and first said he wanted to ask the Arizona senator about a “mental health and mental health care” concern. “Previously I had been married to a woman who was very verbally abusive to me,” the man said. He paused and asked, “Is it true that you called your wife a c***?” The crowd booed, and McCain responded:

So, a fresh and sly political subtext in a very bizarre campaign season. The two Democratic nominees remain icily calm when in each other's vicinity—plain as it is that they cordially loathe and despise one another—while huge shudders of molten rage continue to shake the ample and empurpled yet graying frame of Bill Clinton as he broods on the many injustices to which life has subjected him. What a good time to shift the subject to the temperament (or temper) of Sen. John McCain and to hint, as did Michael Leahy in a major piece in the April 20 Washington...

Sen. John McCain admitted Tuesday morning that he has anger management issues, confessing that it's a problem he's had to work on for many years. "I constantly, throughout my career, have had to work on getting angry and frustrated and losing my temper," McCain told Fox News Channel's Brian Kilmeade, who was filling in on Tony Snow's radio show. "I'm happy to say that I've managed almost always not succumb to that problem," the top 2008 presidential contender explained. But McCain said his temper was particularly raw after he lost the GOP presidential nomination to President Bush five years ago....

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is considered a front-runner for the 2008 race, but does McCain have the temperament to be president? But to insiders who know him, McCain has an irrational, explosive side that make many of them question whether he is fit to serve as president and be commander in chief. Nowhere is that sentiment stronger than in the Senate, where McCain has few friends or supporters. In fact, when McCain ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2000, only four Republican senators endorsed him. "I have witnessed incidents where he has used profanity at colleagues and exploded...

2. McCain Miffed at NewsMax Article A NewsMax.com report about Sen. John McCain’s legendary temper has apparently ruffled the feathers of the probable 2008 presidential candidate. When NewsMax’s Ronald Kessler, who authored the report, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show on July 7 to discuss the story, Kessler stated, “Carlson said McCain’s office was very unhappy that he was having me on.” “I imagine they may have scared off other shows” that might have interviewed Kessler. In his NewsMax report, Kessler wrote in part: “As portrayed by the mainstream media, McCain is an engaging war hero, a man of political...

It is a tribute to John McCain's remarkable political luck that the issue of his temper should arise just as the Democratic contest has reached a stage of red-faced, ear-steaming mutual contempt. It was former President Bill Clinton, not McCain, who recently lost his cool during a meeting with California superdelegates. In a finger-pointing rage over Gov. Bill Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama, Clinton claimed, "Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that." The San Francisco Chronicle reported that one attendee called it "one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended." All of...

For whatever reason, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has not, until recently, had a pervasive reputation among the voting public for being hot-tempered – despite accounts of an explosive temper spanning decades. For example, after he was elected to the Senate for the first time in 1986, McCain spent what should have been a joyous moment screaming until he was red-faced and poking the chest of a young campaign worker who hadn’t set up the lectern tall enough for him. According to Jon Hinz, then-executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, “There were an awful lot of people in...

McCain aide Mark Salter wrote in, and I thought his account provided ample reasons for doubting the Washington Post's story. Salter allowed me to post his email. (I've made minor edits for typos.) Saw your post about the WP story on the McCain temper. If one half of it were true, it would give me pause. As it happens, the piece is 99% fiction. [Reporter Michael] Leahy is a nice guy, but the story was one of the more dishonest I've read in a while. I talked to him for over two hours. Some of the instances, like the Bob...

This is a lengthy, comprehensive review of McCain's angry behavior. Note, that it is a serious effort and tries to be fair; however, the author makes some common errors in respect to emotions and human behavior. The only quote I will post is the below. The article is at least 5 pages long on my computer, so 300 words would not be an adequate review. ...Since the beginning of McCain's public life, the many witnesses to his temper have had strikingly different reactions to it. Some depict McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee for president, as an erratic hothead incapable...

People Accept Anger In Men, But Women Who Lose Their Temper Are Seen As Less Competent, Study Shows ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2008) — Whether you are running for president or looking for a clerical job, you cannot afford to get angry if you are a woman, Yale University psychologist Victoria Brescoll has found. Brescoll and Eric Uhlmann at Northwestern University recently completed three separate studies to explore a phenomenon that may be all-too-familiar to women like New York Senator Hillary Clinton: People accept and even reward men who get angry but view women who lose their temper as less competent....

Republican presidential candidate John McCain knows he has a bit of a temper. “In all candor, as an adult I’ve been known to forget occasionally the discretion expected of a person and station when I believe I’ve been accorded a lack of respect I did not deserve,” the maverick with a reputation for “straight talk” said Tuesday. Rumors of McCain’s uncontrollable temper, substantiated by his Republican Senate colleagues, dogged him during the Republican primaries. During that time Republican Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.)., a Romney supporter, told the Boston Globe the thought of a “hot headed” President McCain “sends a cold...

Scary McCain By Judith KlinghofferWith McCain you get the real thing while with Obama you may get an audacity of rhetoric based on nothing but political expediency and imagined racial grievances. Recent polls reveal that the American people are beginning to get it and that scares not only McCain's Democrat opponents but also European leftists, especially following his successful stops in Britain and France. These European McCain foes recognize the inherent weakness of the main ammunition their American counter parts have been using, his age. Late night comedians' tasteless jokes aside, in an era where 60 is the new 40 and 70 the...

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain's ethics entanglement with a wealthy banker ultimately convicted of swindling investors was such a disturbing, formative experience in his political career that he compares the scandal in some ways to the five years he was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. "I faced in Vietnam, at times, very real threats to life and limb," McCain told The Associated Press. "But while my sense of honor was tested in prison, it was not questioned. During the Keating inquiry, it was, and I regretted that very much." In his early days as a freshman senator,...

Well, I know that people have waited for John McCain to blow his top on the campaign trail, but if this is what they wanted, I think those folks are in for some disappointment. The New York Times and other news agencies have passed this around the blogosphere as some sort of eruption, but I’ve seen priests with less equanimity during Mass than this:VIDEO: McCain, Why Are You So Angry? I agree with Michelle about learning a lesson in dealing with the mainstream media. Obviously Elizabeth Bumiller wanted to trip his circuits; she pulls out a story in 2004 about...

<p>NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain, showing a flash of the temper he is known for, repeatedly cut off a reporter Friday when asked whether he had spoken to Democratic Sen. John Kerry about being his vice president in 2004.</p>

Dole: McCain has a temper, but it's not a problem (CNN) — Former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole said Wednesday night that current White House hopeful John McCain has a temper — but added the Arizona senator “can control it.” Dole told CNN’s Larry King that his former Senate colleague “does have a… I guess you could say temper. But I always sort of rationalized that because the poor guy had been locked up” in a tiny cell for six years. But McCain, he said, “can control it. It's not a problem anymore.” Dole, a former Senate Majority Leader, told...

1) Defending His Amnesty Bill, Sen. McCain Lost His Temper And “Screamed, ‘F*ck You!’ At Texas Sen. John Cornyn” (R-TX). “Presidential hopeful John McCain - who has been dogged for years by questions about his volcanic temper - erupted in an angry, profanity-laced tirade at a fellow Republican senator, sources told The Post yesterday. In a heated dispute over immigration-law overhaul, McCain screamed, ‘F— you!’ at Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who had been raising concerns about the legislation. ‘This is chickens—stuff,’ McCain snapped at Cornyn, according to several people in the room off the Senate floor Thursday. ‘You’ve always been...