From Josh Marshall:
[UPDATE: See also Marshall's response to Scheunemann's explanation of McCain's apparent confusion. You can judge for yourself what you think is going on. See also here:
Back to the post title: by 'smart' I don't mean in the sense of IQ, but more in the sense of being alert and on top of things, or caring about getting things right and being thoroughly well versed. Bush, for instance, is intelligent, but he's not smart in this sense. He just doesn't care–it's not important to him to be broadly knowledgeable, and McCain is looking more like Bush every day.
I don't expect political leaders to be encyclopedic in their knowledge and understanding of the world, but McCain exhibits the strangest pattern of ignorance and obtuseness about subjects he should know about. It's as if, like Bush, he's gotten by on attitude and swagger rather than having any substantive grasp of the issues he's talking about.
In any event, even though I haven't seen anyone write about it, I wonder if a part of the explanation for McCain's lapses and temperament issues lies with his having adult ADD or ADHD. I think it's a legitimate question to ask, and could very well be a key to understanding the impetuous pattern of behavior he has exhibited over his entire life from his poor academic record at Annapolis, through his career crashing jets, his reputation for being a rules-breaking maverick, his problem with anger control.
My wife is herself ADHD and she's a teacher trained to work to help kids who have this and other fairly common learning disabilities to develop coping strategies to manage their lives effectively. Lots of adults have it, but in very few who have it is ADHD been diagnosed–especially in McCain's generation. And lots of adults who have it are high functioning and manage to have interesting productic careers. But there are some jobs they are just not suited for. Senator, yes. President, no.
Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on adult ADHD:
- A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one’s goals (regardless of how much one has actually accomplished).
- Difficulty getting organized.
- Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started.
- Many projects going simultaneously; trouble with follow through.
- A tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark.
- A frequent search for high stimulation.
- An intolerance of boredom.
- Easy distractibility; trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or conversation, often coupled with an inability to focus at times.
- Often creative, intuitive, highly intelligent
- Trouble in going through established channels and following proper procedure.
- Impatient; low tolerance of frustration.
- Impulsive, either verbally or in action, as in impulsive spending of money.
- Changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans and the like; hot-tempered.
- A tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; a tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with attention to or disregard for actual dangers.
- A sense of insecurity.
- Mood swings, mood lability, especially when disengaged from a person or a project.
- Physical or cognitive restlessness.
- A tendency toward addictive behavior.
- Chronic problems with self-esteem.
- Inaccurate self-observation.
- Family history of ADHD or manic depressive illness or depression or substance abuse or other disorders of impulse control or mood.
All of us have something that is not quite right, and we find ways of working around it and to manage our lives effectively, and with people who have ADHD, there are degrees of severity. So I'm just throwing this idea out there for what it's worth. Let's just say it's a question about trying to understand what everyone recognizes as a "temperament problem" with McCain throughout the years.
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