Word: fire
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...this crucial moment, what do we make of the two men before us, the passionate Maverick and the cool-handed Hopemonger, Mr. Fire and Mr. Ice? Does the crucible of a campaign actually give you a glimpse of their souls? And does anything that happens on the trail have any bearing on what would happen after they take the oath of office...
...eloquence: "To have gone through his own adversity with polio and still remain optimistic and upbeat - all of that was what he projected to the country during the Depression," she says. "They had faith in themselves because he had faith in them." McCain had his fortitude forged by fire in a prison camp; he throbs with an energy of someone who has never stopped making up for lost time. He burns more calories sitting in a chair than most people do shoveling snow. Obama is upbeat but never giddy, sunny without being blinding...
Those watery tales have now grown into full-blown clichés. Obama is aloof, self-possessed, cool under fire; McCain is passionate, impetuous, hot under the collar. Each one makes a virtue of his temperament as the right setting for the current climate. Americans, McCain says, "expect me to get angry, and I will get angry, because I won't stand for corruption." His impulsive intervention in the bailout negotiations suited his narrative as an action hero: Suspend the campaign! Postpone the debates! His message is practical, real world, get it done; someone around here has to know when...
...Arizona politics paint a more complicated picture of McCain than as just a crusader against corruption. They talk of bullying and intimidation, of meetings when he banged the table so hard they feared it would split. In one case, recalls former Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini, when he refused to fire an aide who had annoyed McCain, "to put it politely, he told me that I could go do something with myself." DeConcini, a Democrat, says that "in my eight years with him, I learned that John just hates it when you disagree with him. If you press it, he just...
...fireside chats. When Obama sneered to Hillary that she was "likable enough," when he talks about feelings rather than feeling them, when a voter tells him about a tragedy and he pivots into policy, it can make you wonder where his real passions lie. "You have to have a fire inside," Gergen says, "an ambition for the nation, an internal, fierce desire for change, for new accomplishments, higher goals...