The World According to John McCain

McCain himself has long been aware of what he called, in his 2002 book "Worth the Fighting For," his "legendary" temper. "I am combative, there is little use in pretending otherwise," he wrote. While he insisted then that people tend to exaggerate his anger (most people with tempers say the same), he admitted that it "has caused me to make most of the more serious mistakes of my career." But it is not just McCain's anger that worries his detractors; it's the fierce righteousness that is joined to it. During his first Senate run, in 1986, McCain grew so tired of hearing complaints about his anger that he thundered to his staffers ("as they struggled to keep straight faces," recorded author Robert Timberg): "I don't have a temper! I just care passionately." The participant who witnessed McCain's 2006 spat with Steinmeier agrees with this distinction. "He is, plain and simple, the most openly emotional politician in the United States," he says. "Other people have had tempers. Eisenhower had a famous temper. Clinton has a temper. Reagan had a temper. But it's that McCain is so emotional. He does jump to conclusions." In the Senate, McCain is known for getting up and walking out if he doesn't like what he's hearing. "You really don't have the luxury of walking out when you're president; you have a broader obligation," says a longtime Democratic Senate staffer who would describe private meetings only if he were not named. McCain denies he ever walked out of a meeting for that reason, saying that his Senate record shows "calm, sober hours of negotiations, good faith and respect for those who hold opposing notions." But he adds: "I feel passionately about issues, and the day that passion goes away is the day I will go down to the old soldiers' home and find my rocking chair."

Not even his harshest critics suggest that McCain—whose character and sanity were tested by some of the most savage torture a human being could endure—is unstable. And even many Democratic admirers, such as former senators Bob Kerrey and Gary Hart, think he'd be an outstanding president. Lieberman, perhaps his most avid supporter in the Senate, says it's "fair" to ask whether the displays of temper that so characterized McCain's Senate career are suitable for the Oval Office. But he adds: "I've never seen him get angry to the point of a loss of control."

Which fights is he likely to pick as president? As a Vietnam veteran, tempered in the failure of that war, McCain has made many thoughtful and careful judgments about the use of force during his more than 20 years in the Senate. In 1983, as a congressman, he called for the withdrawal of the Marines from Beirut—defying a president he professed to admire, Ronald Reagan. He voted against intervention in Haiti and in favor of a cutoff of funds for the "Black Hawk Down" mission in Somalia. He was leery of a ground war against Iraq in 1991, though he ultimately voted for it. But since then, McCain has also shown a willingness to use force that suggests he has escaped from his Vietnam-bred caution.

McCain himself denies there's been much change in his views, and aides say he's been fairly consistent in embracing the concept so many Vietnam vets have: the "Powell doctrine." Named after former Joint Chiefs chairman and secretary of State Colin Powell, the doctrine says the U.S. military should not be used unless the mission and exit strategy are clear and overwhelming force is applied. In Beirut and Somalia, McCain saw that the missions were muddled, says Mark Salter, his longtime speechwriter and alter ego. "He thought, 'What in the world are these few hundred Marines doing but making themselves targets?' " (Soon afterward, on Oct. 23, 1983, 241 Marines died in a terrorist bombing.)

McCain began to grow somewhat more sanguine after the stunning successes in the gulf war—the start of the "smart bomb" era—and the fall of the Soviet Union. He came to expand his view of America's calling, especially after Serbs slaughtered 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995. In the late 1990s he forcefully backed the air war in Kosovo, and signed the Project for a New American Century letter along with neocons like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle that called for Saddam Hussein to be ousted.

A decade later, after 9/11, McCain proved more eager than Bush was to take on Saddam in the middle of the war against Al Qaeda, declaring in early 2002 that Iraq was "the next front." He has since pledged to keep U.S. troops there indefinitely, saying he's in accord with none other than Osama bin Laden that Iraq is the central battleground in the War on Terror. "General Petraeus and I and Osama bin Laden are in agreement," McCain said recently. "It is hard to understand why Senator Clinton and Senator Obama do not understand that."