WASHINGTON — Three decades after misty eyes helped sink Edmund Muskie's presidential campaign and shock treatment ended Thomas F. Eagleton's vice presidential bid, Democratic hopeful Howard Dean speaks about grief counseling and bouts of anxiety over his brother's disappearance in Southeast Asia.
Wesley Clark chokes up over genocide. John Kerry gets watery-eyed in a New Hampshire diner. John Edwards calls the death of his son "the undercurrent of my life." Even President Bush, the tough-on-terrorism commander-in-chief, has fought back tears in the Oval Office.
In this age of heart-on-your-sleeve politics, signs of emotion are no longer the kiss of political death and may even help breathe life into candidates in need of a human touch.
"It's become another element, another way, of making the public feel they know something they really don't know about a candidate," said Stanley Renshon, political scientist and psychoanalyst at the City University of New York.
Dean has offered scant details about grief counseling he sought in the early 1980s for guilt and anger he suffered after his brother, Charles, disappeared in Laos 30 years ago. The former Vermont governor said last week that he believes remains found at the site belong to his brother.
The candidate, who rarely talks about his personal life, said his brother's capture and death caused him to seek therapy for bouts of anxiety. Dean was quoted as calling the episodes "panic attacks," although his aides said he quickly described that as a poor choice of words.
Renshon said that as common as anxiety attacks are, in a presidential candidate, the episodes raise questions. "Usually, it's about a lack of control and a feeling of anxiety that comes along with that. The question an analyst would always ask is, 'What circumstances trigger that? Is that an ongoing pattern and is it likely to interfere with his judgment?' " he said.
Dean's temperament and political judgment have been an issue, but only because some off-the-cuff remarks have backfired. Nobody has challenged his mental fitness after five terms as governor and more than a year on the presidential campaign trail.
Eagleton's mental history was exponentially more severe, and it forced him off Democrat George S. McGovern's 1972 ticket. The Missouri senator had been hospitalized three times for psychiatric treatment and twice had undergone electroshock therapy for depression.
