Why John McCain's Temper is Probably the only Good Reason to Vote for Him

Can a president drop F bombs? This has prompted questions about whether his temperament is suited to the office of commander-in-chief or whether it might handicap him in a presidential campaign against either Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton, who are not known for such outbursts.
I decided I didn't want this guy anywhere near a trigger, former Budget Committee chairman Sen. Pete Domenici told Newsweek in 2000. (McCain’s sharp tongue: An Achilles heel?)

Former Sen. Bob Dole told CNN’s Larry King last night that John McCain 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 . . . [r]ecently, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) refused to say whether McCain is temperamentally suited to be President. (Leftword, Bob Dole: McCain has a temper).

[O]thers have outright rejected the idea of a McCain nomination and presidency, warning that his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office. (Leftword, 5 years in captivity made John McCain a hero. It also may have made him nuts).

Everyone knows about John McCain’s famous temper, the same temper that has him dropping F-Bombs in senatorial debates, and what is sometimes viewed as a likely liability in the fall. (Comments From The Left Field, Why IS He So Angry). [Note that CFTLF smartly focuses on the reasons why JM was angry, not on the fact that he expressed anger].

I think far too many people are overlooking the value of is his being huffy, puffy and pissed off -- and that it just may be ONE good reason to vote FOR him.

I'm not kidding.

David Allyn, Ph.D., author of I Can't Believe I Just Did That makes the case that hiding one's emotions in order to be "nice" or "accepted" does way more harm (to you and others) than good.

While John's temper is, admittedly, not that much to have going for him, it's not the liability everyone is making it out to be, and that's my real point here. To understand why, read on:

Mrs. G is a woman I would call an expert in the art of emotional concealment. She is always smiling, always has perfect manners, is always covered in thick layers of makeup, and always sounds as if her only interest is in helping others . . . Mrs. G has plenty of acquaintances but no close friends to turn to . . . Mrs. G looks twice her age, with deep wrinkles etched into her face and dark circles under her eyes . . .

Emotional concealment is a strategy we all practice on occasion. We feign boredom when we're excited or excitement when we're really bored. We do our best to "play it cool." We hide our sadness or conceal our anxiety. We pretend to be indifferent when we're desperately in love. (David Allyn, Ph.D., author of: I Can't Believe I Just Did That).

Dr. Allyn makes the case that hiding one's emotions in order to be "nice" or "accepted" does way more harm (to you and others) than good:

Granted there are times when emotional concealment is not only wise but also appropriate . . . [b]ut when it's overdone, emotional concealment creates a mess. It can turn dating into a power struggle, can preclude any possibility of real intimacy in our close relationships . . . [w]hen you conceal your emotions, it encourages others to do the same. It makes every interaction a game of back-and-forth (mis)interpretation

Yes, tact is important and socially smart. Yet it stands to reason that who ever is going to be in the White House, answering the phone at 3AM, we want it to be someone with as few impediments to real communication as possible.

However, there's an even greater risk for those who habitually suppress how they really feel:

The effort involved in emotional concealment actually makes it harder to be rational, to think clearly, to argue logically. In fact, studies show, people who do not waste energy on emotional concealment are better able to process and remember information and to think critically about the information they have taken in. That alone is a major argument against the practice of emotional concealment in dating, in relationships, at work and in school.

And in the White House, presumably . . .

Antonio Damasio, in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, provides strong empirical evidence that unblocked emotional functionally is critical for sound reasoning and decision making:

The findings come from the study of several individuals who were entirely rational in the way they ran their lives up to the time when, as a result of neurological damage in specific sites of their brains, they lost a certain class of emotions and in a momentous parallel development, lost their ability to make rational decisions. Those individuals can still use the instruments of their rationality and can still call up the knowledge of the world around them. The ability to tackle the logic of a problem remains intact. Nevertheless, many of their personal and social decisions are irrational, more often disadvantageous to their themselves and to others than not. I have suggested that the delicate mechanism of reasoning is no longer affected, non consciously and on occasion even consciously, by signals hailing from the neural machinery that underlies emotion.

None of this is to say that John McCain is a paragon of emotional and rational integration, i.e., someone with high emotional intelligence (indeed, not being able to control one's emotions is as bad as not having access to them). It is to say, however, that John McCain's natural ability to openly and publicly express how he really feels, is (without knowing anything more), prima facie, a good thing rather than a bad thing.