The Vices of Their Virtues

McCain took no position at the meeting, while Obama, at least according to some published accounts, peppered Paulson with questions. McCain was apparently positioning himself to play, once more, the Man on a White Horse—riding to the rescue by forging a compromise that the House Republicans could live with. But he seemed to be winging it. Democrats denounced him for staging an elaborate photo op that served only to upset fragile negotiations. Notably, no Republican Hill leaders spoke out in defense of McCain. "They don't like him very much," acknowledged one McCain adviser.

The temperaments of the two candidates both have virtues, both vices. History can belong to the bold—to the Churchills and the Reagans, to men who stand when others sit or surrender, to men who seem to move through the world to a soundtrack of trumpets. But history also belongs to the careful, and to the prudent. Churchill needed FDR's caution and his competing intellectual understanding of the war and of the world that was coming into being; Reagan required George H.W. Bush's grasp of diplomacy and sense of balance to complete the end of the cold war and create a new (and, for Bush 41 and for Clinton, successful) model for American military action in a post-Soviet world.

McCain is not the first Republican to seem too hot. Richard Nixon's temper haunted him, and Bob Dole's reputation as a "hatchet man" doomed any chance he had of beating Bill Clinton in 1996 (Clinton had his own purple rages, but compensated with gushes of warmth). "Barry Goldwater was not particularly angry," notes Princeton historian Julian Zelizer, "but Lyndon Johnson made him seem that way—someone who was too hot and could not be trusted with the bomb."

Democrats, on the other hand, have suffered in recent years by seeming too cold. Two-time loser Adlai Stevenson (1952 and 1956) was brainy but so aloof he could not relate to voters. Michael Dukakis came across as a chilly technocrat who wouldn't protect his own family from criminals, and Al Gore never overcame the impression that he was insincere and a little geeky. John Kerry came across as an effete aristocrat who pretended to like NASCAR racing.

Obama has a tendency to sound like a windy professor. In the Friday-night debate, he was cool but to the point and unruffled when McCain condescended to him as naive and callow. McCain was more emotional and personal, but his jokes fell flat. The candidates were encouraged to address each other directly, but only Obama did, and the effect was to make McCain look like the standoffish one. (McCain's advisers say they had warned him against looking at his opponent, fearing Obama might rile him.) Obama made no attempt to joke, other than to mock McCain for singing songs about bombing Iran. But he seemed perfectly comfortable standing up to his opponent.

Still, leadership is measured in even more primal ways. The burden of the Democratic Party, one that it has to shed in the next 40 days or risk losing yet another race, is elemental. "We forget that voters want a daddy and not a mama, and no matter how big the 'caring' issues are—education, health care—at the end of the day they want a president who is going to defend the country and not take too much of their money away from them," says Harold Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman and head of the Democratic Leadership Council. Whoever can strike that chord best is likely to win in November, regardless of whether his spirit runs hot or cold.

Read Michael Hirsh's "Worlds Apart," a look at the key factors that shaped the presidentical candidates' world views.

With Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe

© 2008