I'm not sure why the media try to portray Obama as never being angry. It is not hard to find examples of him making angry responses to questions on Youtube. Just my two cents. I also think there is a difference between being angry or being steadfast about an issue. Sometimes I think people read more into a response than what there actually is.

I wonder if an examination of "Black Rage" from 1968 is wholly relevant given that societal conditions for African Americans have changed so much in the intervening years and Barack Obama's "black experience" is somewhat atypical. While I am sure that the color of his skin caused some problems for him, it seems that he has effectively found the means to deal with the emotions that resulted from those problems. Yesterday, David Brooks spoke of Obama's acute social intelligence, and he says that there are many stories that describe instances highlighting this aptitude. Certainly such an aptitude would help Obama to "recognize evil and resist or even violently attack it when needed." Futhermore, it seems that Obama elaborated on an example of his using anger effectively when during the second debate he described his anger over the unfairness of his own mother's experience of having to fight insurance companies during the final months of her battle of cancer. Obama says he was angry, but his response being the development of a health care proposal that seeks to mitigate the unfairness of the current system shows an effective response to anger. Last spring Americans became aware of the fact that the Pentagon was using the tag of personality disorder as a pre-existing condition to dishonorably discharge Iraq war veterans who were suffering from PTSD and/or Traumatic Brain Injury. The unfairness of this treatment extended to these service men and women losing their benefits, including the health care that many of them so desperately needed (it also required these injured and suffering soldiers to return their bonuses). When I learned of our country's treatment of men and women who had been willing to give even their lives for all of US, I was so sad and angry. I imagine Barack Obama was angry too, and perhaps that is what motivated him to work with Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond to author and pass legislation requiring the Pentagon to change the policy and review the more that 22,500 servicemen and women who had been treated in this manner.

While it is true that Obama does not "fly off the handle", I think it is unfair to confuse a measured and constructive response to infuriating circumstance as some form of crippling emotional repression. Though I am not a mental health care specialist, it seems to me that Obama's record of responding to unfair and infuriating circumstance with constructive action represents the ideal in human self-actualization.

Point well taken, Brian! A very articulate argument in Obama's favor. I was certainly not intending to criticize either Obama or McCain, but rather to use people's perceptions of them and concerns as an opportunity to comment on the collective problems we all have with anger in general.