Anger Issues Could Become Campaign Issues for Both GOP Frontrunners
Mayor Giuliani was so “mean and thin-skinned” he made criticizing him a criminal offense. A GOP pol has called McCain a “vicious person.”
Campaigning for president is above all else an exhausting experience. The 2008 campaign will be the longest on record — it is underway now, and will ramp up in intensity over the next 21 months.
When people get tired, they get cranky, and crankiness can make them mean. For the two leading Republicans — former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. John McCain — exhaustion could prove to be perilous. Both men, even fully rested, are meaner than most.
Competency will be a threshold qualification in 2008, for obvious reasons. To give Giuliani and McCain their due — unlike George W. Bush in 2000 — both men have long and successful, though not unblemished, careers in public service.
But our Bush-fatigued nation will also be looking for a leader who has a calm, even-tempered demeanor and who can roll with the punches — someone who is emotionally mature. The challenge facing these two tantrum-prone hotheads is that in the heat of the campaign even a small outburst of temper can quash a candidacy, sending it from top of the heap to limping toward last place within the course of a news cycle or two.
“It goes to temperament,” the pundits will say, which means, “We can’t have a hothead with his finger on the nuclear trigger.”
Based on their past performances, it is more than likely that “temperament” will become a deciding issue for both Giuliani and McCain.
