The Temperament Factor: Who's Best Suited to the Job?

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The problem for voters today is that crisis comes in triplicate: Would McCain be better suited to the challenge of another terrorist attack? Is Obama's deliberate style more likely to yield progress against a challenge like climate change? And who can navigate a path through an economic crisis hardly anyone understands? Not only can't you know what a President will face, but his reflexes in one crisis may not be typical of how he responds to another. President Kennedy's temperament has been defined by his ingenuity and cool head during the Cuban missile crisis. "That's not necessarily representative of how he was during his Administration," notes historian David Coleman of the Miller Center of Public Affairs, citing the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam and race relations. "There was a tendency to put off decisions, whether it was foreign or domestic policies ... to maintain as many options as you can."

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TIME's Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs sit down with prominent historians to discuss the most elusive of requirements for a president: Temperament.

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• What Kind of Temperament Is Best?

• Grading the Final Presidential Debate

Every man is a moon, Mark Twain liked to say, with a dark side he doesn't show anybody. The set speeches and careful debates tell us only how candidates want to be seen. Nixon could be a statesman in public and a hit man in private. Eisenhower was the amiable uncle — except that it was known around the White House that if the President was wearing a brown suit that day, stay away or risk his wrath. His reputation as an indifferent manager evaporated once scholars got a look at his papers, which showed a much more engaged and sophisticated player than the avuncular image he cultivated. It is widely believed that Presidents who are good at handling people, who have high emotional intelligence, stand a better chance of pushing their agendas through. But "we put so much emphasis on character because of Nixon," says David Gergen, an adviser to four Presidents. "Until Bush came along, we'd forgotten how important judgment also is."

Two Early Baptisms

When Barack Obama was 6 years old, he was the only foreign child in his neighborhood in Jakarta, Indonesia. He didn't know the kids, didn't speak the language. At first the locals were a little freaked out, says Zulfin Adi, 47, who as a kid lived a block from Obama. "He was so much bigger than the rest of us." So they decided to haze him. One day a group of children ambushed him, carried him to the local watering hole and threw him in. They had no idea if he could swim. But when Obama came to the surface, he was laughing. He could have broken free and crushed them anytime he wanted, but it was much better to play it cool, ride it out and make friends with his adversaries.

John McCain was not quite 2 years old when his parents despaired of managing his tantrums; he would go into a "mad frenzy," he says, holding his breath until he passed out and fell to the floor. A Navy doctor offered a prescription: whenever McCain erupted, his mother would shout to his father, "Get the water!" Then his parents would fill a bathtub with cold water and drop their fully clothed son in. "Eventually," McCain recalls in his memoirs, "I achieved a satisfactory (if only temporary) control over my emotions."

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 to pull the trigger. He sees Obama as a shooting star, all speed and vapor. To McCain, words aren't a form of action; only acting is a form of action. "To encourage a country with only rhetoric," he says, "is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude."