Bush's Temper

Like the blogger I have copied below, I can't believe that more isn't being made out of Bush's outburst last night. It might not have been a "Howard Dean scream" moment, but it was darn close. This is from the blog Deride & Conquer:

Last night was one of those nights when you truly wonder if the television pundits were watching the same debate that you were. Forty-five minutes into it-- or 36 minutes, to be precise-- came the moment when Bush lost control, angrily shouting down moderator Charlie Gibson, leaping from his stool to deliver a pissed-off jeremiad about the Iraq war and the allies that Bush had brought to his side. Gibson himself was stunned into submission; the audience members cast nervous looks at each other; and on the other end of the television camera, in living rooms across the country, Americans exchanged glances across the couch and asked a simple question-- Is this guy stable?

Moments later, the top blogs began screaming "President Kerry-- discuss." It seemed we had witnessed one of those rare moments in politics when the character and mental stability of a candidate is brought into full question. George Bush, in leaping to his feat and bulldozing past the moderator, ignoring the debate rules and any normal sense of decorum, had just given us his Howard Dean moment.

The outburst didn't exist in isolation; like a good player on the stage, his behavior had built toward this crescendo. Bush appeared angry from the very first question, his masticating jaw emblematic of a barely-successful effort to maintain composure. Michael Tomasky describes it thus:

It was the manner: the schoolyard swagger, the left arm cocked like an itchy gunslinger's, the arrogant sneer, the roosterish strutting -- and the voice. God, that voice. You don't quite call that screaming. It wasn't exactly caterwauling. Maybe yowling. Whatever it was, he sounded like a tedious and noisome braggart in the parking lot after a football game.

There was desperation in that voice, too; the sound of a man getting truly hot beneath his collar. It was one thing for the president to be passionate; another thing altogether for the president to be cranky, defensive, bullyish, as he was last night.