WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain made a quick stop at the Capitol one day last spring to sit in on Senate negotiations on the big immigration bill, and Sen. John Cornyn was not pleased.
Cornyn, a mild-mannered Texas Republican, saw a loophole in the bill that he thought would allow felons to pursue a path to citizenship.
McCain called Cornyn's claim "chickens---," according to people familiar with the meeting, and charged that the Texan was looking for an excuse to scuttle the bill. Cornyn grimly told McCain he had a lot of nerve to suddenly show up and inject himself into the sensitive negotiations.
"F--- you," McCain told Cornyn, in front of about 40 witnesses.
It was another instance of the Republican presidential candidate losing his temper, another instance where, as POW-MIA activist Carol Hrdlicka put it, "It's his way or no way."
There's a lengthy list of similar outbursts through the years: McCain shoving a woman in a wheelchair, trying to get an Arizona Republican aide fired from three different jobs, berating a young GOP activist on the night of his own 1986 Senate election and many more.
McCain observers say the incidents have been blown out of proportion.
"I've never seen anything in the way of an outburst of temper that struck me as anything out of the ordinary," said McCain biographer Robert Timberg.
"Those reports are overstated," said Rives Richey, who attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., with McCain in the early 1950s.
McCain's staff wouldn't respond to requests for comment about specific incidents.
But Mark Salter, a longtime McCain aide who functions as the senator's alter ego and the co-author of his books, said that "McCain gets intense, and intent on his argument."
His blowups with senators often result from colleagues being accustomed to deference, he said.
"A lot of these guys aren't used to that," Salter said, so they get annoyed when a peer gets emotional.
McCain's presidential campaign has tried to use his reputation to its advantage; in an early television ad, McCain said: "I didn't go to Washington to win the Mr. Congeniality award. … I love America. I love her enough to make some people angry."
Historians point out that it's not unusual for a president to have a fierce temper, but most knew how to keep it under control.
At age 2, McCain's tantrums were so intense that he'd hold his breath for a few minutes and pass out. His parents would dunk him in cold water to "cure" him, he wrote in his memoir, "Faith of My Fathers." "I have spent much of my life choosing my own attitude, often carelessly, often for no better reason than to indulge a conceit," he wrote.
He was a tough little guy. At Episcopal High, he was a 114-pound wrestler classmates called "Punk" and "McNasty."
Richey, though, noted that such monikers weren't unusual in those days.
"That's the way we all talked to each other."
McCain, Richey said, "was not looking for a fight. He was feisty."
McCain entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1954, and he was popular, the leader of a group that Timberg described as the Bad Bunch, known largely for its ability to have a good time.
Malcolm Matheson, who knew McCain at Episcopal High and stayed friendly with him in college, said his buddy had no trouble controlling his temper in those days.
But as McCain ascended in politics, he began to acquire a reputation for hotheadedness. On election night 1986, then-Arizona Republican Party executive director Jon Hinz recalled, McCain was unhappy, even angry, even though he'd just won a U.S. Senate seat and his party had just made a virtually unprecedented sweep of state offices.
McCain had hoped that night would help launch him as a national figure. Instead, when the 5-foot-9 senator-elect spoke at the Phoenix victory party, the lectern was too tall.
"You couldn't see his mouth," Hinz said.
A furious McCain sought out Robert Wexler, the Young Republican head in charge of arrangements.
"McCain kept pointing his finger in Wexler's chest, berating him," Hinz recalled. The 6-foot-6 Hinz stepped between them and told McCain to cut it out. "I told him I'll make sure there's an egg crate around next time," he said.
McCain walked away angrily.
About a year later, McCain reportedly erupted again, this time at a meeting with Arizona's then-Gov. Evan Mecham, who was about to be impeached after being indicted on felony charges.
Karen Johnson, then Mecham's secretary and now an Arizona state senator, recalled how McCain told Mecham that he was "causing the party a lot of problems" and was an embarrassment to the party.
"Sen. McCain got very angry," Johnson recalled, "and I said, 'Why are you talking to the governor like this? You're causing problems yourself. You're an embarrassment.'"
Johnson would go on to work at three different jobs in the next five years, and she said that each time, McCain would contact her boss and try to get her removed.
Call David Lightman, McClatchy Washington Bureau, (202) 383-6101.
