Legal Commentary

McCain privately apologized to Cornyn shortly after May 2007 profane shouting

By Beldar

Back in May 2007, I made one of the bigger fusses of anyone in the right-of-center blogosphere over Sen. John McCain's rude behavior toward one of my home-state senators, John Cornyn. I'd previously written from time to time about my disapproval of McCain's positions on a variety of substantive issues, especially his leadership of the GOP renegades from the so-called Gang of Fourteen compromise over judicial nominations. But his shouting profane insults at Sen. Cornyn bespoke to me a fundamental lack of temperament that I described then as "a textbook example of immature and irresponsible pique ? ill-fitting a U.S. senator, and incomprehensibly inappropriate for a would-be U.S. president."

Although at that point I had not endorsed any GOP candidate, the incident troubled me so much that I declared my formal opposition to McCain's bid for the GOP nomination. Prophetically (out of many more missed prophecies), I admitted that "I would still probably hold my nose and vote for him in November 2008 if he became the GOP's nominee, because I don't believe in self-immolatory politics and the Democratic alternative will inevitably be worse on the issues most important to me." But I insisted that "Sen. McCain owe[d] Sen. Cornyn ? and frankly, Sen. Cornyn's constituents, and his own ? an immediate and unstinting public apology."

As I followed the various GOP candidates' campaigns since then, I saw several more press references to the shouting incident. But there certainly was never any comparably public apology by Sen. McCain, and I was left wondering what might have been said between them in private.

Now, as part of this AP article entitled "McCain's Sharp Tongue: An Achilles Heel?" I read that McCain at least made a private apology, and that he did so promptly:

With Cornyn, he smoothed things over quickly. The two argued during a meeting on immigration legislation; Cornyn complained that McCain seemed to parachute in during the final stages of negotiations. "F--- you. I know more about this than anyone else in the room," McCain reportedly shouted.

Cornyn chuckled at the memory of what he called McCain's "aggressive expressions of differences." The Texan has endorsed McCain.

"He almost immediately apologized to me," Cornyn said last week. "I accepted his apology, and as far as I'm concerned, we've moved on down the road."

(Texas' other U.S. senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, has also endorsed McCain, and her name has been mentioned as a possible Veep nominee even though Texas remains a reliably red state even without a favorite son or daughter on the ticket.)

It's not that I'm worried that a President McCain might order an air strike on San Antonio if he gets cross-wise with Sen. Cornyn again. And if fate should ever put, say, Hugo Chavez on the same platform as McCain, the potential for clashing would probably be so obvious that McCain would have summoned up his very best behavior in advance; while his past explosions have sometimes been public, they haven't typically been while on camera or on stage. All things considered, I'd rather that the GOP nominee be of a naturally even temper rather than a hot one. But modest pluralities of GOP primary voters in a very small number of states have ensured that he hottest tempered, grumpiest, and most foul-mouthed of the major candidates will be at the top of the GOP ticket in November. I'm actively working at coming to grips with that, and little bits of information like this one help.

Sen. McCain is obviously aware of this particular set of character flaws. Even if he can't extirpate or suppress them, I'm at least glad for this confirmation that he has sufficient grace and presence to make necessary apologies. I suspect he'll have occasion to make more than a few of them during the rest of the 2008 campaign.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on February 17, 2008 (boomark / email).