McCain: Anger Management Issues

It is jarring to keep seeing this blur of negative campaign ads against Barack Obama and at the end of each one hear John McCain's voice intone, "I'm John McCain and I approve this ad." These clips only add to the increasing evidence that McCain's default approach to Senator Obama is sarcasm and anger.

Some argue that the "increasing bitterness" of the McCain campaign, as The Washington Post quoted one senior Republican strategist, is not the real John McCain, the McCain of 2000. John Weaver, a strategist who worked for McCain's presidential campaign in 2000 has observed that this negative strategy "diminishes John McCain" and "needs to stop."

But what if the angry John McCain is the real McCain? What might be the cause in this race for McCain almost being unable, as one columnist has observed, "to say Senator Obama's name without sputtering."

I think the difference between these two men is profound, almost diametrically opposed. Senator McCain cannot help but be deeply formed by his suffering in war and his belief system is clearly rooted in a war-based patriotism. For McCain, war is the answer. For Senator Obama, his formative experience is community organizing and this is likely a source of his conviction that force is not the only answer. International alliances, like community alliances, are his default approach before any consideration of the use of force (though force is not, of course, off the table).

McCain has a huge amount of existential meaning in his life wrapped up in war. As Chris Hedges has so brilliantly argued in his book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, "War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us." Senator Obama's very being, to say nothing of his policies, is anything but "black and white." It is complex and flexible.

Senator Obama's long-standing and principled opposition to the Iraq war, and his practical questions about what the surge has achieved beyond the obvious fact that more troops increases security for our troops, is a challenge to the deep meaning of John McCain's life.

But the anger must be reigned in, no matter what the existential challenge. It is becoming unseemly in a presidential campaign.

When media watchdogs talk about the astonishingly negative turn the McCain campaign has taken so early and so consistently at this point, they use terms like "desperate," "wrong," "misleading," "ugly," "offensive," "reckless," and "a nasty turn into the gutter."

From a faith perspective, however, it is worse. Paul warns in Ephesians, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice." This is insightful because Paul adds the word "malice" to this revealing list. Malice is the will to do harm to someone and it often is a product of bitterness and anger.

This is a very serious presidential campaign and profound questions are at stake. This may not be obvious when the level of silliness has risen to the point that the McCain campaign is comparing Senator Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. But underneath, there seems to be genuine anger on the McCain side that may be rooted in Senator Obama's deep threat to his world view, a world view deeply shaped by war.

It is a test for Senator McCain if he can put this anger down and respond in a civil fashion, i.e. without malice, to Senator Obama's challenge even to his most deeply held views. If not, in a political sense, we are getting a glimpse of the McCain default to anger as a response to challenge. In a religious sense, we may be getting a glimpse of McCain's true moral character.

By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite  |  July 31, 2008; 3:54 PM ET
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Posted by: anne | August 5, 2008 4:45 PM
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