John Dickerson: Presidential Anger Management
[John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at slatepolitics@gmail.com.]
...Here's the thing about presidential anger. It's never seen in public—not just from our first smooth jazz president, but from any president. If presidents show anger in public, they risk looking out of control, which in moments of crisis is the exact opposite of what people want.
When there is anger, it's not often constructive anger. Perhaps the most well-known angry president moment was when Bill Clinton denied having "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. Yes, that anger was targeted at a specific problem. But it was not exactly helpful. Clinton had other moments. The New York Times' John Harwood reminds me that Clinton chewed out Brit Hume, then of ABC News, when he asked about a "certain zigzag quality in the decision-making process" of his nomination to the Supreme Court of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had just made a speech. "How you could ask a question like that after the statement she just made is beyond me," he said....
It's not that presidents don't get angry. They show it as candidates. Clinton shouted down a heckler. George H.W. Bush's most irritated moment happened during an interview with Dan Rather in 1988. Ronald Reagan's most explosive and famous moment came in Nashua, N.H., at a primary event with Republican candidates. As ex-president, Jimmy Carter had a throwdown with Sudanese officials.
We don't see presidential anger, but we hear about it later either in carefully planted quotes—a week after the spill, Gibbs let it be known that Obama told aides "plug the damn hole"—or those well-reported books. Or we hear about it later on a presidential recording. (Here's John Kennedy getting angry about Air Force furniture. Here's Lyndon Johnson giving the business to Albert Thomas.) Sometimes presidents are dimed out by their friends and successors. Thomas Jefferson described George Washington as a man who mostly kept a lid on his anger but when he "broke his bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath," falling "into one of those passions when he cannot command himself."
If you want to make a president angry, one way to do it is to talk to them about their anger. Nixon, we know from the Watergate tapes, had a deep and abiding anger, but in public he didn't let it show. "The tougher it gets," he used to say, "the cooler I get." But then he was asked about his anger. "Don't get the impression that you arouse my anger," said the president to a reporter during a news conference. "You see, one can only be angry with those he respects." The angriest Obama has gotten in public was when he was asked about (wait for it) why he didn't get angry enough....
Read entire article at Slate
...Here's the thing about presidential anger. It's never seen in public—not just from our first smooth jazz president, but from any president. If presidents show anger in public, they risk looking out of control, which in moments of crisis is the exact opposite of what people want.
When there is anger, it's not often constructive anger. Perhaps the most well-known angry president moment was when Bill Clinton denied having "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky. Yes, that anger was targeted at a specific problem. But it was not exactly helpful. Clinton had other moments. The New York Times' John Harwood reminds me that Clinton chewed out Brit Hume, then of ABC News, when he asked about a "certain zigzag quality in the decision-making process" of his nomination to the Supreme Court of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had just made a speech. "How you could ask a question like that after the statement she just made is beyond me," he said....
It's not that presidents don't get angry. They show it as candidates. Clinton shouted down a heckler. George H.W. Bush's most irritated moment happened during an interview with Dan Rather in 1988. Ronald Reagan's most explosive and famous moment came in Nashua, N.H., at a primary event with Republican candidates. As ex-president, Jimmy Carter had a throwdown with Sudanese officials.
We don't see presidential anger, but we hear about it later either in carefully planted quotes—a week after the spill, Gibbs let it be known that Obama told aides "plug the damn hole"—or those well-reported books. Or we hear about it later on a presidential recording. (Here's John Kennedy getting angry about Air Force furniture. Here's Lyndon Johnson giving the business to Albert Thomas.) Sometimes presidents are dimed out by their friends and successors. Thomas Jefferson described George Washington as a man who mostly kept a lid on his anger but when he "broke his bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath," falling "into one of those passions when he cannot command himself."
If you want to make a president angry, one way to do it is to talk to them about their anger. Nixon, we know from the Watergate tapes, had a deep and abiding anger, but in public he didn't let it show. "The tougher it gets," he used to say, "the cooler I get." But then he was asked about his anger. "Don't get the impression that you arouse my anger," said the president to a reporter during a news conference. "You see, one can only be angry with those he respects." The angriest Obama has gotten in public was when he was asked about (wait for it) why he didn't get angry enough....