GULFPORT -- Notably mild-mannered Republican Sen. Thad Cochran shocked many earlier this year with comments about John McCain's volatile temper. He has since mended fences with the GOP presidential nominee.
But as first reported at sunherald.com, Cochran told the Sun Herald he witnessed a confrontation between McCain and a Sandinista rebel decades ago in which McCain "got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him."
Elected to the U.S. House in 1972 and then to the Senate in 1978, Cochran, a consummate gentleman, measures his words and his actions carefully. But he said something that surprised many in a Boston Globe article in January about his longtime Senate colleague McCain.
"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Cochran told the Globe. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
The two senators have made peace since the remarks. Cochran said McCain included him on a recent campaign visit to Meridian. He told the Sun Herald on Monday that McCain, whose ancestors lived in north Mississippi, is the best man for the job.
But Cochran said he observed McCain engage in a physical confrontation with a Sandinista while participating in a diplomatic mission led by Sen. Bob Dole and others in the fall of 1987. Cochran, McCain - who had won election to the Senate that year - and other members of a bipartisan committee of lawmakers called the Central American Negotiations Observer Group - met with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, head of the left-wing political party known as Sandinistas, about tensions in the region.
The atmosphere was tense, as the U.S. was pressing "pretty hard." Cochran noticed a disturbance at the meeting table in a room lined with armed personnel.
"McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerilla group here at this end of the table and I don't know what attracted my attention," Cochran said. "But I saw some kind of quick movement at the bottom of the table and I looked down there and John had reached over and grabbed this guy by the shirt collar and had snatched him up like he was throwing him up out of the chair to tell him what he thought about him or whatever. I don't know what he was telling him but I thought, good grief, everybody around here has got guns and we were there on a diplomatic mission. I don't know what had happened to provoke John but he obviously got mad at the guy and he just reached over there and snatched him."
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