Do you think tempermant is an important quality to focus on in a presidential candidate?

YES.

I think temper is a huge quality to focus on. When a situation calls for diplomacy, you can’t get mad and apologize later. It doesn’t work. One bad moment can ruin political relationships between countries.

Maybe that is why McCain is so concerned about preconditions!

Seems to me that a failure of diplomacy is what got us mired down in Iraq. We need a diplomat, not a dictator. I think the President has essentially 2 jobs, one is making decisions and the other is meeting with people (whether those people be foreign leaders and dignitaries, or people in Congress or just people who can make things havppen). Temperament I dare say is the most important thing you can have when you’re making a decision, because if you are prone to fits of anger where you can not control your temper, and this happens when you are called upon to make an important decision, you are far more likely to make a rash decision. I’d much rather have someone who knows himself well enough to keep calm under pressure…if you can master your own temper, you can keep yourself in check and keep yourself from making a bad decision in the heat of the moment. Second, when meeting with people, temperament is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN HAVE. Some people, let’s face it, are IMPOSSIBLE to deal with, and you have to be willing to see the forest for the trees and get beyond personality conflicts. Some people will just rub you the wrong way, but if you can keep it together and realize that what’s important is the goal and how do you bring this person on board, that’s the kind of skill you need.

@ SoapChef – Thanks for that link. boy that guy has issues.

I think it’s very important. The level of misogyny he’s shown on many occasions speaks volumes. That added to the choice of running mate and the way she’s been coddled and spoken over by him all comes from the same place. A guy like that can’t actually think he’s representing women with any integrity at all.

Besides the temper issue, you just have to wonder if the guy doesn’t get why the rape joke isn’t funny and isn’t appropriate—what else does he not get that we’d expect one of our leaders to get?

I think it should be more of an issue than it is today. McCain goes off half-cocked. George Bush holds grudges.

I want a leader who is reasoned even in a stressful situation. I think Reagan was surprisingly good in that regard.

I think Obama will be excellent if he is elected.

Why do the sources on a blog, lead to another blog?

I just wanted to say “Thank you!” This Q and the links I followed gave me loads of info on McCain’s character to pass on to my husband. See my related Q here.

@Cheeb: There are sources. Clink on embedded links to see the blog entry, which also has links to the source(s).

@Augustian Good luck with your husband, I will keep my fingers crossed.

@Soap: Me, too.

Also, *edit: Click – not Clink! apparantly I had “link” on the brain

some of the links were expired, but if they were taking the time to link to the blog, why not just link to the real source? I don’t really care what someone else said in another blog, because a blog is never a good news source….

I don’t really see a problem with linking to one site that had all the other links gathered in one place. It would take way more time and effort than I would give to link to all the individual sites. I did notice some links were expired, though.

Bottom line on this one regarding the links as I see it is, as someone who has been following this election quite closely for 2 years now, not a single one of these incidents was anything new to me. I had seen credible sources for each and every one of these claims before hand. If one were to doubt the veracity of any of these claims, a simple google search would turn up multiple independent and non-biased sources to confirm each one of them.

Though I too would suspect linking to a blog to prove my point, particularly if that blog were liberal leaning and relied on another liberal leaning blog as reference material, in those cases I would look for corroborating evidence if it were important enough to me that were I to confirm it, it might actually change how I would vote. However, since I don’t suspect that this would be the case with cheebdragon, I’m not really certain of what value it is to question it.

In other words, cheeb, it is either worth your time to do the legwork to verify this, or it is not…if it is worth your time to know what is true and what is not, then do what you have to in order to bring yourself peace, and if it is not wroth your time, then don’t worry about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAyK-enrF1g

Good grief. Makes you wonder what is going through his mind in those debates eh?

I am thinking he has a serious
Napoleon Complex

Here is the second edition of that video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c&feature=related

Here’s another article on a little potential “character” issue folks might or might not want to consider. Take it for what it’s worth:

http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2008/09/sarah-palin-does-not-care-about-black-people/

And here is a picture of a bunny with a pancake on it’s head

…at least you didn’t Rickroll me! Actually, brilliant, lurve for you!

ok, what’s Rickroll? ...and I don’t get the bunny with the pancake thing, either.

@cyn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickroll

Not sure of your approx age or what kind of music you’re into, so you may or may not get this reference. There was this guy in the late 80s called Rick Astley, and he had this really poppy song, “never gonna give you up…never gonna let you down…never gonna run around…and hurt you.” Maybe you’ve heard it. So, you go to a blog, they put up a link and BAM, it’s that video.

Of course the wiki is probably a better answer than that…probably has a link to the video and everything.

The bunny, I don’t know if there’s anything to “get” or not, just one of those things, some of us laugh when someone throws in something completely meaningless and off topic and just silly, I guess. It’s kind of like Monty Python…“And now for something completely different…”

Oh, wow. Thanks for explaining that folks. Oh, what a sad choice. I remember the song and that guy who always looked like a slightly older brother of that kid from 16 candles. Yeah, I’m moderately old, but that wasn’t the sort of thing we listened to on purpose. Crap. Now I’m not going to get that out of my head for a while. It just reminds me of this. Sometimes I’m evil. :^>

Good to know I wasn’t really missing anything with the bunny. I guess Easter bonnets aren’t what they used to be.

yeah, the bunny thing. We were just listing links like crazy. And like Dale said it was just one of those things some of us laugh at for the reasons he listed.

When I saw it I Laughed.

lmao – “that wasn’t the sort of thing we listened to on purpose”

here’s another one I came across today re McCain’s temper…again, take it for whatever it’s worth to you:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/09/report-mccain-exploded-wi_n_133242.html