After musing yesterday and today on the mainstream media's obsession with Howard Dean's supposed temper and mean streak, characterized by seemingly standardized quotes from different news sources to the tune of "Dean responsed surprisingly well, not allowing himself to be provoked into rage or bluster, and...so and on..."
This meme is catching on like a California brush fire. It's time to put it out.
Do Google searches on "George W. Bush" and "President Bush", along with "temper" or "quick temper" or "mean streak", and flood the zone!
George W. Bush's Quick Temper - From Time Magazine
Within Bush, the tension between his quick temper and his capacity for detachment is not unique. It is mirrored by the clash between a self-confidence that sometimes borders on arrogance and a humility born out of faith and some experience with failure. And it is reflected also in his willingness to surround himself with smart advisers on the one hand and his disdain for haughty intellectuals on the other. The question is whether the crucible of a two-year campaign changed Bush and, if so, how.
With a bit of savvy media handling by the Dean campaign, this obsession with Dean's temper and whether he's going "to lose it" should quickly be brought to an end.
We need to focus on issues, and substance, not shallow character analysis and assassination, regardless of which candidate you currently favor.
One Difference Between George W. Bush And Abe Lincoln - A Quick Temper
Lincoln was a patient man, and in his later years, was remarkably slow to anger. "Quarrel not at all," Lincoln wrote. "No man who has resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention." One of Lincoln's contemporaries, Albert D. Richardson, who was a journalist for the New York Tribune, later wrote: "He (Lincoln) was too kind for bitterness and too great for vituperation." (Wilson, p. 213)
Bush has a reputation for a quick temper and never forgetting a slight. "He is impatient and quick to anger; sometimes glib, often dogmatic." (Frum, p. 272)
A Temper And A Mean Streak - Two Georges
An interesting interview from the Atlantic Monthly (March 11, 2003).
So would you say that the younger Bush is better suited to the position than his father was?
Well, we'll know the answer to that when the war is over, and that could be a long time from now. But it's possible that he is. George W. Bush has a mean streak, which his father did not have. I think a leader has to have a mean streak. If he lets it dominate him, that's a bad thing. But it has to be there somewhere.
How does George W.'s mean streak manifest itself?
It may manifest itself in his follow-through, which in a sense represents a taming of the mean-streak. If you have a goal that requires a certain amount of aggression or a certain amount of confrontation, and if you can pursue that goal over a long period of time, you've obviously got more than a mean streak working for you. But you've got to have the mean streak as the emotional engine that keeps you going.
The classic example is George Washington, who had a terrible temper. All his life he had this temper, from when he was a teenager to when he was President. Much of the personal story of his life is how he reined that in and got control over it. He managed to get so much control over it that Americans today have forgotten that this was one of his qualities. But if he hadn't had it, I don't know whether he would have had the gumption or the staying power to fight an eight-and-a-half-year war against Great Britain or to do any of a number of the other things that he accomplished.