Maturity comes late for some politicians
It used to be common wisdom that young men matured later than young women and that they were 3 to 4 years behind at 18. Typically, this was thought to even out in the mid-twenties. And both were ready for their prime productivity by 30. Yet it took till George Bush was 40 to get his excessive drinking under control and he still has trouble overcoming that smirk usually seen at 16.
Now we learn John McCain is finally learning how to control his temper - at 71. It’s a fairly enlightening article.
I already had learned that, in high school, he got nicknamed ‘Punk’ and ‘McNasty’ because of that temper. At the Naval Academy afterward, his combativeness didn’t mark him as a leader” he finished 894th out of 899 graduates. Unlike Bush’s AWOL and early exit from the Air National Guard, McCain had served heroically as a tortured captive prisoner of the North Vietnamese. When he turned 40, he didn’t quit drinking, like Bush had done. Instead, he started having extramarital affairs, which ultimately led to a divorce and new marriage at 43.
At 63, he was defending the flyiing of a Confederate flag at South Carolina’s capitol grounds, while he ran for President. He’s been profiled in news accounts in the past two years as being a ‘wiseass’ with the ’second worse temper in the Senate’ per Capitol Hill staffers. But at 71, he’s learning to hold his temper.
Certainly, there’s positives in his political career; he couldn’t get this far without some achievements. Yet the long, slow progress to his maturity milestones has to make voters wonder if they’d prefer a President who matures at a more normal, much earlier age.
Can McNasty really hold his temper now?
(Most of the details I covered here were drawn from his bio in Wikipedia.)
