Can McCain control his temper?

A Salon.com article on McCain gives me additional reasons to be concerned about McCain. Although I like McCain over any of the Democrat candidates, Mitt is of such higher caliber than McCain that I can hardly believe McCain is still generally considered the Republican frontrunner. I'll just have to assume that most folks simply haven't gotten to know Mitt well enough to make an earnest comparison.

The Salon article reveals some pretty disturbing things about McCain that I consider well beneath the type of behavior we should demand from the President of the United States.

McCain's political colleagues, however, know another side of the action hero -- a volatile man with a hair-trigger temper, who shouted at Sen. Ted Kennedy on the Senate floor to "shut up," called his fellow Republican senators "s---head," "f-----g jerk," "a--hole," and joked in 1998 at a Republican fundraiser about the teenage daughter of President Clinton, "Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father." As recently as a few months ago, McCain suddenly rushed up to a friend of mine, a prominent Washington attorney, at a social event, and threatened to beat him up because he represented a client McCain happened to dislike, and then, just as suddenly, profusely and tearfully apologized.

Within the Republican Party nearly everyone who has had serious dealings with McCain distrusts him (including traditional Republican moderates, not just conservatives). While taking right-wing positions on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, his simmering resentment of Bush led him to virtually caucus with the Democrats in early 2001 (before Sept. 11), using the Democratic Leadership Council as his back channel. Then, abruptly, he rushed to embrace Bush.