Sister of Missing Vietnam Soldier "Appalled" that McCain Could Become President
As the sister of a missing man from the Vietnam Conflict, I am appalled at the possibility that John McCain could become the next President of the United States.
In 1982, when McCain was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, I was elated--believing that the former POW would understand the dilemmas confronted by the POW-MIA families and would offer his full support--WRONG!
In 1986, McCain was elected to the U.S. Senate. He organized two veterans affairs committees, in Phoenix and Tucson. We were quickly introduced to McCain's violent temper and the fact that no one was to have an independent thought--it was his way or not at all. The Tucsoncommittee existed possibly one year.
I recall a telephone conversation with Mark Salter, aide to McCain, wherein I was told that, "veterans' issues are the least of the Senator's concerns and the Senator has no intention to ever offer his support to the families of the missing-in-action." I immediately contacted the POW-MIA network. Several days later, I received a scathing reprimand from McCain. During this long distance telephone confrontation, I remember telling McCain of a Tucsonlawyer who was reviewing my brother's case. He asked for the lawyer's name, I gave it to him--a regrettable decision on my part. I informed the lawyer of McCain's call--that was the last conversation I had with him. Within a few weeks, there was a concerted effort to close my brother's case. I telephoned the lawyer several times leaving messages; he never returned my calls. Did McCain threaten to destroy this lawyer's career? Did McCain coerce the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) and The Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii (CILHI) to devise a method or methods to close my brother's case?
During the November 1992 Hearings of the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, my sister, Dolores Alfond, Chairperson for the National Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen and Women was testifying. In the course of her testimony, Senator McCain burst into the hearings, interrupted Dolores' testimony--vehemently chastising her, and just as quickly he left the proceedings--leaving my sister in tears! WHY WOULD JOHN MC CAIN TREAT AN MIA FAMILY MEMBER IN THIS MANNER?
During June 1996 at the National Alliance of Families Annual Conference in Washington, DC, a group of approximately two-dozen people went to the Senate Building hoping to meet with McCain about the Missing Service Personnel Act of 1996. He refused to meet or to even schedule a meeting while the family conference was in session. As we were contemplating our next move, the Senator and a young, attractive female aide came from his office in our direction. Our spokesperson, John Parsels, a former POW of Vietnam, stepped toward McCain, asking if he would talk with us. McCain denied any knowledge of the Act and brushed past Parsels. As he approached the niece of Charles Duke, Jr. (missing civilian, 05-30-70, South Vietnam), she stepped forward to speak and McCain backhanded her, causing her to hit the wall.
As McCain and the aide continued walking, I then saw Jane Duke Gaylor, mother of Charles Duke Jr., who was in her mid-80's and wheelchair bound, stretch her arms toward McCain saying, "Please talk with us." "Please talk with us." McCain raised his left arm ready to strike her, controlled himself, and pushed the wheelchair away from him. McCain and the aide continued down the hall and I saw Carol Hrdlicka (wife of Capt David L. Hrdlicka, USAF, POW, 05-18-65, Laos), John Parsels, and others follow McCain. The remainder of us looked at each other in total shock as to what we witnessed in those few minutes. It was later learned that Jane Duke Gaylor and her niece had gone to the Senate Police to file a complaint--the police refused to help them. John McCain is personally and single handily responsible for gutting the Missing Service Personnel Act of 1996. WHY? WHY DOES MC CAIN TREAT THE POW-MIA FAMILIES IN THIS MANNER?
Have the American people forgotten that John McCain is one of the "KEATING 5?" During 1990-1991, McCain and four other senators were brought before the Senate Ethics Committee for their involvement with Charles H. Keating of the savings and loan scandal that began in the 1980's.
Have you forgotten that in 1994, McCain's second and current wife, Cindy Lou Hensley of Hensley and Company, the Phoenix-based second largest national liquor distributor for Anheuser Busch, was found guilty but never prosecuted for the theft of Percocet and Vicodin (narcotic analgesics). This happened while Cindy Hensley McCain was head of a nonprofit organization that sent medical supplies into third world countries.
Did Cindy Hensley McCain receive favoritism from the court because of her family status in Phoenix, as well as being a senator's wife? Until the Senator's recent surge in the polls, Cindy McCain was noticeably absent from the campaign.
I HAVE BEEN A POW-MIA ACTIVIST SINCE THE DAY MY BROTHER WENT MISSING. I WAS THERE IN THE EARLY YEARS FIGHTING THE WASHINGTON BUREAUCRATS FOR MY BROTHER'S RIGHTS AS WELL AS FOR THE RIGHTS OF POW JOHN MC CAIN. WHY HAS HE TURNED HIS BACK ON US?
SOMEONE SHOULD ASK HIM.
ELEANOR APODACA
SISTER OF MAJOR VICTOR JOE APODACA, JR., USAF
MIA 08 JUNE 1967 NORTH VIETNAM
It's 3 a.m. Who do you want answering the phone?
Not John McCain, say some military leaders: "I think his knee-jerk response factor is a little scary."
By Mark Benjamin
Mar. 06, 2008 |
It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep
But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing
Something's happening in the world
Your vote will decide who answers that call
Whether it's someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military -- someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world
It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep
Who do you want answering the phone?
That, of course, is the script from Hillary Clinton's now famous (or infamous) "3 a.m." television ad that ran in Texas just ahead of the March 4 primary. At the end of the ad, Clinton answers the phone.
Following Clinton's win of the popular vote in Texas, there seems to be general agreement among the pundits that a significant number of undecided voters were relieved by the idea of Hillary Clinton's answering the phone, rather than Barack Obama. The ad was a fear-based attack, building on a theme that has been central to Clinton's campaign. Clinton, the ad's message said, is the Democratic candidate better equipped to deal with the frightening world out there from day one. It may have scared up enough votes to keep Clinton's campaign alive by helping bring her a crucial win in Texas (notwithstanding the awarding of delegates there, still to come).
Polls show that the economy is a big deal to American voters in the 2008 election. But the apparent effectiveness of the 3 a.m. ad in Texas is a reminder of the importance of national security in voters' minds, and of just how high the stakes are for the next commander in chief. The United States is bogged down in two nasty wars, and the Army and Marine Corps are stretched thin. China and Russia are on the rise. The Middle East is roiling, and Iran continues to bluster and obfuscate over its nuclear program. Something unexpected and bad is likely to happen during the next presidency, maybe even at 3 a.m. Washington time.
But while the consensus is that the 3 a.m. ad helped Clinton, it has also drawn criticism as a tactic that ultimately benefits John McCain, particularly if he is to face Obama in the general election. In essence, Clinton has now turned the debate about commander-in-chief readiness into a contest of résumés. And the conventional wisdom is that John McCain -- ex-fighter pilot, former POW and war hero -- wins.
But that's not necessarily the case, say senior military officials and political analysts. In interviews with Salon this week, several experienced military officers said McCain draws mixed reviews among military leaders, and they expressed serious doubts about whether McCain has the right temperament to be the next president and commander in chief. Some expressed more confidence in Obama, citing his temperament as an asset.
It is not difficult in Washington to find high-level military officials who have had close encounters with John McCain's temper, and who find it worrisome. Politicians sometimes scream for effect, but the concern is that McCain has, at times, come across as out of control. It is difficult to find current or former officers willing to describe those encounters in detail on the record. That's because, by and large, those officers admire McCain. But that doesn't mean they want his finger on the proverbial button, and they are supporting Clinton or Obama instead.
"I like McCain. I respect McCain. But I am a little worried by his knee-jerk response factor," said retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004 and is now campaigning for Clinton. "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."
"I studied leadership for a long time during 32 years in the military," said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, a one-time Republican who is supporting Obama. "It is all about character. Who can motivate willing followers? Who has the vision? Who can inspire people?" Gration asked. "I have tremendous respect for John McCain, but I would not follow him."
"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," explained retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former Republican, former chief of staff of the Air Force and former fighter pilot who flew 285 combat missions. McPeak said his perception is that Obama is "not that up when he is up and not that down when he is down. He is kind of a steady Eddie. This is a very important feature," McPeak said. On the other hand, he said, "McCain has got a reputation for being a little volatile." McPeak is campaigning for Obama.
Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown who is studying the personalities of the presidential candidates, agrees McCain's temperament is of real concern. "The anger is there," Wayne said. If McCain is the one to answer the phone at 3 a.m., he said, "you worry about an initial emotive, less rational response."
Most recently, Wayne has been studying Clinton's personality. "I just gave a presentation on Hillary's temperament for the presidency. I came to the conclusion that it is not really a good presidential temperament, with one caveat -- if you compare it with McCain's."
There is no question that McCain has more national security experience than either Obama or Clinton. His five-and-a-half-year ordeal as a prisoner of war in Vietnam established him as a legitimate American hero. He served his first term in Congress starting in 1982 (when Obama was still an undergraduate at Columbia University) and has continued to be a leader on national security issues for most of his career, including serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
John Lehman, the Navy secretary during the Reagan administration and a McCain supporter, said he has known the Arizona senator for 30 years. Lehman said that in comparison with some of the people he has worked for, such as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, "John McCain is a pussycat."
"I have never seen him really lose it and really be just passionately furious," Lehman said. "When I have seen him lose his temper, it is for effect."
Lehman suggested that national security experience is the far more important issue. "It creates a matrix for judgment, not only with events. It also gives you a depth of knowledge of people and institutions," he explained. "You would not go to have brain surgery in a crisis to someone who is fresh out of medical school."
McCain's outbursts have only occasionally been captured by the press. The most recent episode appeared to have occurred last May, when McCain was embroiled in immigration reform negotiations with Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Cornyn accused McCain of "parachuting" in on the negotiations. During the heated exchange that followed, McCain screamed "Fuck you!" at Cornyn, according to news reports at the time. McCain later apologized.
Such McCain episodes have occurred for many years. Strikingly, McCain has an icy relationship with some families of American service members still missing in Southeast Asia. That's in part because in a 1992 hearing he unloaded on a witness whose brother went missing during the Vietnam War. Dolores Apodaca Alfond expressed concern that the Senate panel looking into missing service members might shut down before it exhausted all the possible avenues of finding answers. "I do not denigrate your efforts," McCain thundered at her. "And I am sick and tired of you denigrating mine and many other people who have views different from you."
McCain later backpedaled from the outburst, admitting that he may have "appeared upset."
Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Republican group Americans for Tax Reform, has locked horns with McCain on domestic policy issues. He said that during those encounters, the senator has "never been anything but really pleasant to me." But Norquist adds that he has talked to U.S. senators who have told him that McCain can really blow up. "People say that you get these McCaingrams," Norquist said. "He yells at you, and before you get back to your office you get the apology note, which is the equivalent of somebody who knows that this happens and is prepared for it."
McCain's supporters will no doubt continue to assert that his experience far outweighs any alleged issues with temperament. But if past wartime presidents are a guide, experience of the kind McCain has isn't necessarily a prerequisite for performing well as commander in chief. Historians point out that presidents without any experience in the military have guided the country through some of its most dangerous conflicts.
The closest thing Woodrow Wilson had to commander-in-chief credentials was his term as governor of New Jersey. Wilson gave Franklin D. Roosevelt his only pre-Oval Office military-related experience -- by appointing him as assistant secretary of the Navy. Both presidents faced down world wars, but neither had fought in one.
"Whether it is being a prisoner of war or fighting courageously on the front -- which I respect and admire tremendously -- it doesn't necessarily give you the kind of broader perspective that you might want someone to have for making decisions that affect the lives of millions and the future of the globe," said Brian Balogh, a historian at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. "There are people who tell you, 'I know. I saw it. I was there.' And then there are people who are often maligned with patriotic rhetoric, but who are standing at a bit of a distance" from a serious national security crisis, Balogh said. "But oddly enough, because they are standing at a bit of a distance and not personally risking their lives, they actually can see things better."
Such a view supports Obama's reiterating on the campaign trail that had he been in the U.S. Senate in 2002, he would have had the judgment and foresight to vote against the authorization to use force against Iraq, when most other senators, including McCain and Clinton, voted for it. At the time of the resolution authorizing force, Obama was a state legislator in Illinois, and delivered a speech opposing the war.
While Clinton has no direct military experience, her campaign pushes the argument that her knowledge of national security is on a par with McCain's, making her more qualified to be commander in chief than Obama. Terry McAuliffe, the campaign chairman, keeps saying that Clinton has "visited over 80 countries" and "knows world leaders." Clinton strategist Mark Penn admitted during a conference call with reporters last week that the 3 a.m. ad was designed to highlight a "perception" that Clinton is tougher than Obama. "I think this ad speaks to what people I think very much know in their heart about Senator Clinton," Penn told reporters. Clinton, he said, is "seen as someone who is both strong and able to make these decisions."
If controversial within the Democratic Party for potentially arming McCain against Obama in a general election, it may be the only fight Clinton can pick with Obama on national security, since the Democrats have campaigned on similar national security philosophies. Their emphasis is on "soft power," or the utilization of all possible government assets and branches to secure U.S. interests and combat terrorism globally. It means a commander in chief who is willing to emphasize diplomacy and international economic policy as well as the carefully calibrated use of military force when necessary. It means that the "war" on terrorism is fought by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development as much as it is with skilled, well-equipped ground forces that can train foreign armies and call in precision air strikes.
Many military experts are enthusiastic about this departure from the Bush administration's approach, which they commonly describe with a proverb: "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
Eaton, the retired general supporting Clinton, admits that, just like Obama's own supporters from the military, he is ultimately making a personal judgment call about her personality and temperament. "There is a toughness to this lady," he says. But it is not because she fought in any more wars than Obama. "I am convinced of that, with everything that Hillary Clinton has been through for the last 15 or 16 years from the Republican Party, from government, from her husband."
McCain, who still bears the physical scars of his captivity in Vietnam, will no doubt continue to campaign on his war experience and national security record -- it's considered by many to be the turf where he is strongest. But if his Democratic opponent -- whether Clinton or Obama -- can shift the discussion to leadership qualities, it may help disarm the Republican nominee.
Retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, who has been a Republican his entire adult life, but who now supports Obama, put it this way about facing a national security crisis: "When everybody else goes nuts, the president of the United States needs to get cooler and cooler."
-- By Mark Benjamin
McCain: A Question of Temperament
By Michael Leahy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 20, 2008; A01
John McCain cupped a fist and began pumping it, up and down, along the side of his body. It was a gesture familiar to a participant in the closed-door meeting of the Senate committee who hoped that it merely signaled, as it sometimes had in the past, McCain's mounting frustration with one of his colleagues.
But when McCain leaned toward Charles E. Grassley and slowly said, "My friend . . ." it seemed clear that ugliness was looming: While the plural "my friends" was usually a warm salutation from McCain, "my friend" was often a prelude to his most caustic attacks. Grassley, an Iowa Republican with a reputation as an unwavering legislator, calmly held his ground. McCain became angrier, his fist pumping even faster.
It was early 1992, and the occasion was an informal gathering of a select committee investigating lingering issues about Vietnam War prisoners and those missing in action, most notably whether any American servicemen were still being held by the Vietnamese. It is unclear precisely what issue set off McCain that day. But at some point, he mocked Grassley to his face and used a profanity to describe him. Grassley stood and, according to two participants at the meeting, told McCain, "I don't have to take this. I think you should apologize."
McCain refused and stood to face Grassley. "There was some shouting and shoving between them, but no punches," recalls a spectator, who said that Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey helped break up the altercation.
Grassley said recently that "it was a very long period of time" before he and McCain spoke to each other again, though he declined, through a spokesman, to discuss the specifics of the incident.
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 of staying cool in the face of what he views as either disloyalty to him or irrational opposition to his ideas. Others praise a firebrand who is resolute against the forces of greed and gutlessness.
"Does he get angry? Yes," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who supports McCain's presidential bid. "But it's never been enough to blur his judgment. . . . If anything, his passion and occasional bursts of anger have made him more effective."
Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: "His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him."
A spokesman for McCain's campaign said he would be unavailable for an interview on the subject of his temper. But over the years, no one has written more intimately about McCain's outbursts than McCain himself. "My temper has often been both a matter of public speculation and personal concern," he wrote in a 2002 memoir. "I have a temper, to state the obvious, which I have tried to control with varying degrees of success because it does not always serve my interest or the public's."
That temper has followed him throughout his life, McCain acknowledges. He recalls in his writings how, as a toddler, he sometimes held his breath and fainted during moments of fury. As the son of a naval officer who was on his way to becoming a four-star admiral, McCain found himself frequently uprooted and enrolled in new schools, where, as an underappreciated outsider, he developed "a little bit of a chip on my shoulder," as he recalled this month.
During a campaign stop at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, the most famous graduate of the Class of 1954 opened a window on what swirled inside him during his school years. "I was always the new kid and was accustomed to proving myself quickly at each new school as someone not to be challenged lightly," he told students.
"As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone who I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect. Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life."
He defied authority, ridiculed other students, sometimes fought. The nicknames hung on him at Episcopal mocked his hair-trigger feistiness: "Punk" and "McNasty." Hoping to emulate his father and grandfather, also an admiral, he went on to the Naval Academy, where his pattern of unruliness and defiance continued, landing him near the bottom of his class. "I acted like a jerk," McCain wrote of the period before he righted himself to become a naval aviator, a Vietnam POW and eventually a career politician.
The trajectory of his temper, studied ever more intently as his White House ambitions took shape, includes incidents from his years in the House and in the Senate, leading up to the early days of his current presidential campaign. In 2007, during a heated closed-door discussion with Senate colleagues about the contentious immigration issue, he angrily shouted a profanity at a fellow Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, an incident that quickly found its way into headlines.
Reports recently surfaced of Rep. Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican, taking offense when McCain called him "boy" once too often during a 2006 meeting, a story that McCain aides confirm while playing down its importance. "Renzi flared and he was prickly," McCain strategist Mark Salter said. "But there were no punches thrown or anything."
'Everyone Has a Temper'According to aides, McCain's frequent comments about his temperament reflect a recognition that the issue persists for some voters and the media. At times he expresses regret about his temper, often tracing it to the same resentments that ignited him as a boy: "In all candor, as an adult I've been known to forget occasionally the discretion expected of a person of my many years and station when I believe I've been accorded a lack of respect I did not deserve," he said at Episcopal.
On other occasions, he has contended that his blowups have served a purpose. In a recent interview with CNN, while referring to his temper as "a very minor thing," McCain declared that voters occasionally want him to vent: "When I see corruption, . . . when I see people misbehaving badly, they expect me to" be angry.
Salter, who has co-written five books with McCain that, among other things, explore the origins of his feistiness, said he thinks McCain's temper first became an issue after an incident in 1989, during McCain's first term in the Senate.
The nomination of a beleaguered John Tower to become defense secretary was already in trouble when Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, a conservative Democrat who later became a Republican, helped doom it by voting against Tower. A furious McCain, believing that Shelby had reneged on a commitment of support, accosted him, got within an inch of his nose and screamed at him. News of the incident swiftly spread around the Capitol.
"I think it started there," Salter said, though by 1989, many of McCain's colleagues had already heard stories about other eruptions during his two terms in the House.
Part of the paradox of McCain is that many of the old targets of his volcanic temper are now his campaign contributors. Former Phoenix mayor Paul Johnson is one example. In 1992, during a private meeting of Arizona officials over a federal land issue that affected the state, a furious McCain openly questioned Johnson's honesty. "Start a tape recorder -- it's best when you get a liar on tape," McCain said to others in the meeting, according to an account of their "nose-to-nose, testosterone-filled" argument that Johnson later provided to reporters.
But Johnson, who once was quoted as saying that he thought McCain was "in the area of being unstable," today says that he has mellowed, citing a 2006 face-to-face apology that he said he received from his old adversary. "He's not the same guy, as far as I'm concerned," Johnson said. "And nothing has happened during the course of this year's campaign."
Cornyn is now a McCain supporter, as is Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, himself a past target of McCain's sharp tongue, especially over what McCain regarded as Cochran's hunger for pork-barrel projects in his state. Cochran landed in newspapers early during the campaign after declaring that the thought of McCain in the Oval Office "sends a cold chill down my spine."
Indeed, aside from a single testy exchange in March with New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller over whether he had had a conversation in 2004 with Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry about being his running mate -- a tape of which appeared immediately on YouTube -- McCain has been noticeably unflappable throughout the primaries. Advisers posit that his temperament ought to be a dead issue.
"Everyone has a temper . . . but there has been no evidence of a temper problem here," said Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager. "In our campaign, he has done give-and-take with people everywhere, regardless if someone agrees or disagrees with him. There is no more probing process than a presidential campaign. He has performed well under the most intense kind of pressure."
Friends and EnemiesMcCain has been down this road before. During his 2000 presidential run, responding in part to questions about his temper and what effect, if any, his 5 1/2 years as a POW had on his psyche, he released about 1,500 pages of his medical and psychiatric records, which presented a clean bill of mental health.
"I'm not saying he doesn't have a temper, but it's governable," Salter said. "When he has a heated argument, it's usually with one of his peers, who are unaccustomed to being addressed that way by anyone, really. Sometimes he can't govern his tongue. He's just blunt -- he's a straightforward person."
McCain has built much of his appeal, especially with independents, as the fiery maverick willing to defy both parties. His tempestuousness has girded him in high-stakes confrontations, especially against Republican conservatives who regard his occasionally moderate stances as proof that he has sold them out.
"You will damn well do this. You will make this a holiday. You're making us look like fools," he privately exploded two decades ago at a stunned group of Arizona Republicans who opposed creating a state holiday in remembrance of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Early during their days together in the Senate, Smith came to believe that McCain often used his temper as a strategic weapon, that if he "couldn't persuade you, he was going at least to needle you or [sometimes] belittle you or blow up into trying to have you believe you were beneath him, so that you'd be less likely to challenge him. He needed to be the top guy."
Smith admits to not liking McCain, a point he has often made over the years to reporters. "I've witnessed a lot of his temper and outbursts," Smith said. "For me, some of this stuff is relevant. It raises questions about stability. . . . It's more than just temper. It's this need of his to show you that he's above you -- a sneering, condescending attitude. It's hurt his relationships in Congress. . . . I've seen it up-close."
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]."
While in the course of a policy disagreement at a luncheon meeting of Republican senators, McCain reportedly insulted Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico with an earthy expletive. Domenici demanded an apology. "Okay, I'll apologize," McCain said, before referring to an infuriated Domenici with the same expletive.
Salter insists that many of McCain's run-ins with colleagues and activists have resulted from McCain's conviction that his honor in some way has been questioned. "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."
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.
According to two employees in the office, McCain told Freestone that the applicant's past political associations left her carrying unflattering baggage.
The pair of Freestone staffers thought it odd that a U.S. senator would even know that Johnson had applied for a job in their office, let alone that he had taken time out of his workday to pick up a phone and weigh in on a staffing matter so removed from the locus of Washington power. But McCain's disenchantment with Johnson was personal: 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.
Around the time of Meacham's ouster, Johnson said, McCain paid a visit to him. Johnson recalled that McCain swiftly used the opportunity to lecture Meacham: "You should never have been elected. You're an embarrassment to the [Republican] Party."
A stupefied Meacham just stared at the senator. An indignant Johnson, as she tells the story, snapped at McCain: "How dare you? You're the embarrassment to the party."
As Johnson and another person working in Freestone's office remember, the surprised supervisor told Johnson about McCain's objections to her. "But I'm hiring you anyway," Freestone told her.
For Johnson, McCain's call raised questions as to whether he bore a lasting animosity against anyone who ever challenged him. "Everyone in [Freestone's] office thought it was all ridiculous . . . and petty," remembers Johnson, a devout Republican conservative who today is an Arizona state senator.
"Senator McCain says he has no recollection of ever making a phone call to block a job for Karen Johnson," Salter said.
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. According to the two people in the office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, DeConcini defended Leiby and, praising what he characterized as her bipartisan fairness and expertise, urged McCain to give her a second look. McCain refused, repeating his demand that Leiby be fired.
DeConcini "politely told McCain to go to hell," according to a source close to the conversation, adding: "Not once in [DeConcini's 18-year Senate tenure] did another senator ask for an aide to be dismissed. Not once did anyone speak about an aide like that."
Episodes such as the Johnson and Leiby incidents, along with McCain's oft-chronicled blowups on Capitol Hill, have led critics to say he has a vindictive streak, that he sees an enemy in anyone who challenges him.
"I heard about his temper more from others," said Grant Woods, McCain's first congressional chief of staff, who is generally regarded as McCain's closest confidant in his early political years. "According to them, he really unleashed on some of them, and they couldn't figure out why. . . . It happened enough that it was affecting his credibility with some people. If you wanted a programmed, subdued, always-on-message politician, he wasn't and will never be your guy."
Woods helped orchestrate McCain's first House campaign in 1982 and worked to get him elected to the Senate in 1986. That year the 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."
Hinz recalls intervening, placing his 6-foot-6 frame between the senator-elect and the young volunteer. "John, this is not the time or place for this," Hinz remembers saying to McCain, who fumed that he hadn't been seen clearly by television viewers. Hinz recollects finally telling McCain: "John, look, I'll follow you out on stage myself next time. I'll make sure everywhere you go there is a milk crate for you to stand on. But this is enough."
McCain spun around on his heels and left. He did not talk to Hinz again for several years. In 2000, as Hinz recalls, he appeared briefly on the Christian Broadcasting Network to voice his worries about McCain's temperament on televangelist Pat Robertson's show, "The 700 Club." Hinz's concerns have since grown with reports of incidents in and out of Arizona.
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.
Woods raced over, according to a witness, and pulled Dowling away. Woods said he has "no memory" of being involved, "though I heard something about an argument."
"What happens if he gets angry in crisis" in the presidency?" Hinz asked. "It's difficult enough to be a negotiator, but it's almost impossible when you're the type of guy who's so angry at anybody who doesn't do what he wants. It's the president's job to negotiate and stay calm. I don't see that he has that quality."
Having reunited with his old boss after a falling out in the '90s, Woods is back on board. Barbara Barrett, too. Other Arizona Republicans, once spurned or alienated from McCain, have accepted invitations to rejoin him, though not Sandra Dowling or Jon Hinz, who said, "I've just seen too much. That temper, the intolerance: It worries me."
How Big a Factor?Historians are generally ambivalent over whether hot-tempered leaders have fared any worse than the placid. Harry S. Truman once threatened bodily harm in a letter to a reviewer who wrote disparagingly about the musical talents of his daughter. Richard M. Nixon ranted, and so did Bill Clinton. George Stephanopoulos once described Clinton's "purple rages," which left Stephanopoulos, often the subject of Clinton's private lashings, so shaken that he broke out in hives, sunk into depression and began taking an antidepressant.
"Clinton could flare up," remembers John D. Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff. "You might have to endure five minutes of him yelling. But you could challenge him. . . . He would sometimes get mad when [aides] pushed back -- but it was a passing moment; tomorrow would be fine. You didn't get in the doghouse for pushing back."
"Temper can sometimes be a political instrument," said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. "There are sometimes calculated displays of temper, which is what Lyndon Johnson used to persuade people. . . .
"But sometimes somebody's temperament can get in the way of aides telling him the truth, which happened [during the Vietnam War] with LBJ. His temper scared some [aides] away, which was not good for anyone. . . . That's always part of the risk with a strong temper . . . and so it's always relevant."
After his failed 2000 presidential campaign against George W. Bush, McCain sensed the political cost of his temperament. During a debate, he had snapped at Bush: "You should be ashamed. . . . You should be ashamed." In May 2006, he told CNN: "My anger didn't help my campaign. It didn't help. People don't like angry candidates very much."
McCain's defenders today include an old nemesis -- Grassley.
"It doesn't mean I'm buddy-buddy with McCain," the senator said recently. "He may have a short fuse. . . . But I've come to the conclusion that his strong principles, sometimes backed up by considerable" -- Grassley paused -- "not temper, but considerable conviction, is what a president ought to have."
One man's bulldozer is another's bully. "I don't think that he forgets anyone who ever opposed him, that he can ever really respect or trust them again," said Karen Johnson, the targeted secretary-turned-state senator. "That goes for people here and overseas."
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