- (Image: Jeff Chiu - AP. May 4, 2008. Phoenix. washingtonpost.com)
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- Going back a few weeks, the topic of McCain's temper
briefly grabbed the spotlight before being quickly shooed away.
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- I'm not saying that anger comes into play in this shot
from Monday's WAPO Day In Photos. What I feel the photo does demonstrate,
however, is an intensity or an emotional ferocity to the man -- his affective
thermostat fixed in a range most Americans might want to think twice or
three times about before trusting McCain with more than a bag of peanuts.
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- From the caption, we know that McCain is attending an
Arizona - NY baseball game; that he's among fellow Arizona fans; and that
he's standing beside the team CEO, Jeff Moorad. From the image, combined
with previous observation, I draw at least two conclusions about McCain's
wiring, one having to do with emotional intensity, the other having to
do with reactivity and its effect on the ability to process and respond
to more complex emotional situations.
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- If you compare McCain's reaction to every other fan in
the photo (considering both the tonal and gestural response of the crowd,
and in particular, the five, maybe six people we can clearly make out),
it is exponentially more intense.
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- I can't say if the excitement of competition is what
lights his fire, or what, but you can't find another emotional display
here that is even close (except, perhaps in that arm, lower right, with
the wrist watch). What it reflects -- echoed in interpersonal allusions
in McCain's self-described history, as well as the oscillation in his patience
on the campaign trail -- is the degree to which Mac is susceptible to intense
emotional surges.
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- What is just as interesting, however, is what I describe
as McCain's emotional reactivity. What I'm referring to is not just the
intensity of the response but also its speed, and how much that, too, differs
from the crowd's.
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- What I mean is, if you study the other people in the
photo, what you encounter are emotional reactions that are more complex
and nuanced. If you had to generalize, you could say they combine at least
two different attributes, the first being approval and pleasure over what's
happening on the field, but second, and the more prevalent one, a more
open-ended curiosity, inquisitiveness and concern for what continues to
unfold in front of them.
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- What scares me about McCain is not just the intensity
of his emotions, but how their escalation is often based on snap- emotionally-based
reactions to situations that are inherently more enduring and complicated.
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- Taking the picture as a modeling exercise, I'd feel a
whole lot safer with a Commander-in-Chief more representative of the guy
in the Hawaiian-looking shirt, the man in the red shirt, the lady in the
turquoise and the white-haired guy to her right. What you get in that package
is a candidate with more awareness in the moment; more feeling informed
by thought; more sustained attention; greater inquisitiveness; and more
recognition of a larger picture.
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