Earlier this year, Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran said the prospect of his "erratic" and "hotheaded" GOP colleague John McCain becoming President "sends a cold chill down my spine." Now we know why. As the Biloxi Sun Herald reported today, Cochran witnessed an out-of-control McCain disrupt a tense 1987 diplomatic mission in Nicaragua by grabbing an associate of Sandanista leader Daniel Ortega by the shirt collar.
As Cochran told the Sun Herald, then freshman Senator McCain was part of the Central American Negotiations Observer Group led by Bob Dole which met with Ortega during the fall of 1987. It was during those difficult discussions aimed at reducing regional tensions that McCain in essence assaulted one of his Nicaraguan counterparts:

"McCain was down at the end of the table and we were talking to the head of the guerrilla group here at this end of the table and I don't know what attracted my attention. 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."

Mercifully, McCain's shocking outburst did not scuttle the talks or create a serious international incident. As the Sun Herald noted:

No punches were thrown and the two sat back down, Cochran said. The man, who appeared ruffled after the confrontation with McCain, was an Ortega associate, but Cochran said he was unsure of his identity.

While McCain has frequently directed his legendary temper at his Republican colleagues (as both Perrspectives and McCain's would-be VP choice Mitt Romney previously detailed), this is the first known episode the maverick vented his fury at a representative of a foreign government. Hopefully, McCain's straight talk during his visits this week to Columbia and Mexico won't include the F-bombs he dropped on GOP allies such as Chuck Grassley and John Cornyn.
Predictably, Thad Cochran has undergone a transformation in his views towards McCain. Just prior to endorsing McCain's presidential bid earlier this year, Cochran acknowledged:

"The thought of his being President sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me."

Just not as much as the prospect of the Republican Party losing its stranglehold on the White House. Now, Cochran says, "McCain is levelheaded." And what quality does Thad Cochran now admire most about John McCain, a man with a track record of attacking a foreign diplomat? His maturity, of course:

"We need somebody who is familiar with all of our resources and not afraid to lead. I just think we're going to come down to saying, 'Well, we better stay with somebody who has been there awhile and has the maturity of years and experiences like John McCain does.'"

UPDATE: In response, John McCain claimed that Cochran's allegation is "simply not true." McCain added, "There was never anything of that nature. It just didn't happen." For his part, a Cochran spokesperson comically claimed, "Decades have passed since then and he wanted to make the point that over the years he has seen Sen. McCain mature into an individual who is not only spirited and tenacious but also thoughtful and levelheaded."